


Becoming

by PuppetMaster55



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Gen, In which a greater plot rears its head, Naruto has pretty horrific nightmares, Vampires, headcanons galore, naruto joins the akatsuki, vampire healing is not pretty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-23 02:52:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6102417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PuppetMaster55/pseuds/PuppetMaster55
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From death comes life. Immortality can be gained by those wise enough to find it, but at what cost? For Uzumaki Naruto, he's about to discover the answer, as he is pushed to the edge of sanity and back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Death

The sky was dark, and the new moon was evident in the streets of Konohagakure, making it much darker than usual. The only light came from the occasional streetlight or those few shops open so late at night. It was nearly midnight, and one Uzumaki Naruto was steadfastly walking through the streets, arms full-up with bags of groceries. Since his earlier revelation of his milk having soured, Naruto had made a quick stop at his apartment, removing his Hitai-Ate and setting it down on his dresser. He'd gone through his cabinets and fridge, tossing out the old, moldy and expired food while making a list of what to shop for before heading out into the forest to train.

The reason for his sudden need to train was because his new Sensei, someone named Hatake Kakashi, had told him and his two teammates that they were going to go through a survival exercise the following day, and to not eat breakfast. Naruto frowned at that thought, wondering just _why_ they weren't supposed to eat breakfast, but if it would make him a ninja, he'd gladly follow those orders.

Turning a corner, Naruto's thoughts drifted to his two teammates. When his name and Sakura's had come up, he'd been elated- the girl he liked- or rather, used to like, since she'd said that she didn't like him and had said that he was a nuisance, making him rethink his crush on her- was with him, so that created enough opportunities for him to prove her wrong. He wasn't a nuisance and didn't get in her way, he was Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage! Shifting his groceries, Naruto allowed himself a small punch before having to adjust so that his groceries didn't fall over. His thoughts then went to his other teammate- Uchiha Sasuke.

Naruto didn't know what those girls in his class thought Sasuke was so cool, since he never did anything to garner their attention. Sure, his family had all died, which made Naruto feel for the guy- them orphans had to stick together- but that didn't suddenly turn the guy into someone able to make women swoon when he struck a pose or talked to them. Walking under a streetlight, Naruto scowled as he thought of Sasuke's personality, or lack thereof. The guy barely said anything to anyone, and yet most of the girls in his Academy class had thought that he was some kinda prize to be won!

Shaking his head clear of those thoughts, Naruto continued on, walking through the empty streets, feeling his aching muscles scream for rest.

His Sensei- Naruto didn't know enough about the guy to make an accurate description, but he seemed like a flake. A lazy flake, since he got hit with the eraser and evaded answering his own questions. It made Naruto wonder if it was too late to try to get onto another team, and half-remembered words of Iruka-Sensei saying that all team placements were final drifted through his head.

Naruto was so caught up in his thoughts that he barely noticed when a woman appeared before him, hysterical. She was wearing a simple white gown, flowing down and around her body, so wispy it made her seem almost ethereal. The stark white of the gown made her dark skin stand out all the more, and Naruto swore that her skeleton could be seen through her skin.

"Please, help!" She gasped out, her chest- which, Naruto saw, was just as skeletal as her face, seeming to contain almost no amount of muscle- heaving with short, uneven breaths. Naruto took a step back, scared.

_Are people supposed to look that... dead?_

"Help!" She rasped again, her voice sounding like nails on glass, it was so rough and grating. The sudden noise had Naruto drop his groceries, the contents of the bags spilling out haphazardly, and clutch his ears and stagger backwards, away from the skeletal woman. She took a step towards Naruto, though whether it was a step or she just threw her leg out and hoped it would catch ground and keep her upright was unknown, and raised a single arm, so thin it was almost like it was just a skeleton with skin over it, towards him. "Please." She repeated in a softer voice.

Naruto lowered his arms, by now completely scared of this strange woman, and looked around quickly, hoping for someone- anyone- to step in.

There were none, the street just as bare as before.

The woman took another step towards him, her torso falling forward as she continued to beg him for aid. Moving with as much speed as his worn muscles could, Naruto's hands darted down to the pavement, picking up the half-empty bags.

"I'm sorry, miss." He started babbling, hoping against hope that she would just _go away_. "But I don't think I can help you."

His hands were positively shaking as he picked up his scattered groceries, and he was reaching for his carton of milk- which had fallen very close to the woman- when Naruto felt the skeletal hands latch onto him, pulling his entire body towards her.

Shrieking (because that high-pitched noise that left his mouth most definitely was _not_ an un-manly scream of terror, despite how much it sounded like one), Naruto twisted, trying to slide out of his jacket and escape, only to find that the woman had too good a grip on him. Thankfully, his legs were free, and he was close enough to her that he could kick her legs out from underneath her, hopefully using the distraction to escape and seek help. However, his kick never landed, and she seemed to have regained her ability to properly function, as she hooked one of her hands around his throat and had slammed him against the pavement before kicking his knee, the sound of the kneecap's shattering audible to the entire area. Naruto opened his mouth in a silent scream riddled with wet coughs, his entire body arching up and away from the ground, before he began to blindly flail about, throwing punches at her as best he could, only to find his left hand held in one of her own, her bones biting through his skin and squeezing. There was a snapping sound, and she dropped his arm, his hand dangling down lifelessly. Naruto was breathless, and opened his mouth to scream once more. This time, he had no doubts that the sound he emitted as she heft him up, carrying his weakly protesting body with her back into the alleyway.

Naruto held his one good hand in one of the basic hand seals taught to everyone, trying to gather chakra that wasn't there, only to realize that he'd worn up almost all of his chakra training, fighting with his Shadow Clones and practicing his aim with his Kunai and Shuriken, meaning he had little else to use against this woman. He vaguely noticed that she had stopped and had struggled to free himself and limp into one of the shops, where a ninja (and a medic) undoubtedly would be called for, but the dark-skinned skeletal woman held fast, tightening her grip on him ever-so-slightly, making him gasp for air through a highly bruised and broken throat that already was hard to breath with. He tried to speak, only for the words to come out as a wet gurgling nose, his lips clapping together soundlessly. Suddenly, he felt weightless for a second before all 89 pounds of him returned, jerking him down and exacerbating his wounds. The woman pulled on his jacket, yanking him down onto the wet, stinky ground, and Naruto realized with a start where she'd taken him- the sewers.

 _Oh god._ He frantically thought. _She's going to kill me!_

Though he could not see anything in the pitch black of the sewer, Naruto could feel her grasping his jacket and yanking at its collar, trying to free his neck. Naruto made one final attempt at fighting back, using the last of his strength to try to reverse their positions, only for the woman to shake off his arm like it was nothing more than a fly in her face. Yanking hard, Naruto both heard and felt his jacket rip, the two halves slumping down past his shoulders to rest around his elbows, as he now spent what were undoubtedly the last moments of his life clenching his eyes shut and cradling his surely-broken wrist up against his body, trying to conserve what little heat the dark, dank, cold sewers made to leech from him. His breaths were short and wet, drawing little air into his lungs, as his windpipe had undoubtedly been crushed when he'd been slammed down onto the pavement.

"Help." The woman whispered into his ear, her breath hot, disgustingly so, and the smell of it made him gag- like rotting, moldy meat. Naruto could feel her breath as she moved down to his neck, all hot and like that of a dead animal, and he heard the sound of something wet slapping against something else. He wondered what it was, and it wasn't until she dragged her tongue over his jugular did he realize what the sound was.

She was licking her lips.

_She's gonna kill and eat me._

The last thing he remembered before his descent into the inky, unfeeling void of unconsciousness was pinching and pain and the feel of his blood as it was drawn out of his body-

And then, in a sewer in the dead of night, Uzumaki Naruto died.


	2. After Life

Naruto jolted upright, eyes wide. He took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of putrid air, before gagging. Reaching up to cover his mouth, Naruto felt the remains of his jacket tug lightly before tearing in half completely, both halves hanging from his arms.

_What the hell?_

Naruto dropped his hands, letting both pieces fall down (and silently lamenting the destruction of one of his jackets), he stared at them in confusion before the events of the previous night came back.

Returning from training, exhausted.

Grocery shopping, to replace his spoiled or lacking foods.

The woman in white.

Her overpowering of him, breaking his wrist, kneecap and crushing his windpipe before-

Naruto jumped to his feet, shrieking, and backed up against the slimy wall of the sewer as he remembered everything. Patting down his body, Naruto felt the beginnings of a small scar on his neck, over his jugular, covered in dried blood. A more thorough investigation of his body revealed no other injuries, his body in perfect condition, and he felt not broken bones, only a hunger that made his throat itch and his tongue dry. Sighing in relief, Naruto barely noticed that his broken bones and bruises were gone, as he'd always healed from injuries in minutes, if not hours. Looking around, Naruto saw nothing to indicate the woman's presence in the sewer, seeing only the slow trickle of sludge on the floor of the sewer, slowly dragging his ruined jacket with it.

Off to his left was a ladder, most likely leading up to the manhole he'd been dragged down. Running towards it, he jumped up, latching onto one of the higher rungs and using his upper body strength to pull himself up the rungs and to the manhole. Reaching up to the manhole cover, Naruto placed his sludge-covered sandals onto one of the rungs, pressing down hard to counteract the slickness that threatened to send him back down into the nightmare that was that crazed cannibalistic woman. Pressing both hands on the cover, Naruto went through the list of things he'd do once he was up on the street again. He'd gather his spilled groceries before dumping the ones that had spoiled in the time he'd been down there, go to his apartment, drop off the groceries before picking up his gear and heading to Kakashi's-

He lifted up the manhole, which went flying into the alley.

_BRIGHTPAINHURTSPAINBRIGHTBRIGHTBRIGHTBRIGHT!_

Naruto hissed and recoiled from the sunlight, feeling his skin blacken and burn under it's rays. In his haste to get away from the burning sunlight, he'd shifted his feet, causing his sludge on his sandals to work its magic and make him fall back down into the comforting dark of the sewer. He felt his head slam against the side of the tunnel and his feet get entangled in one of the lower rungs, upending him and making Naruto fall headfirst down into the sewer-

and onto the dried husk of the mysterious woman.

Naruto reacted as best he could, using his arms and legs to crab-walk as far from it as he could.

"What the hell!" He screamed, backing up against the wall, his heart-

Naruto stopped breathing.

His heart, after that fall and that kind of shock, should have been beating a mile a minute.

Instead, it wasn't.

Pressing his hand against his chest, he tried to feel for some sign of his heartbeat through his shirt, only for him to feel nothing. No faint thumping, no rhythmic _thump-thump_ or deafening pounding. Nothing.

His heart wasn't beating.

_What happened to me?_

The sound of hissing and crackling brought his attention to the body of the woman, which was decaying and seemed to smoke as the sun bore down on it. Swallowing to try to wet his now-drier throat, Naruto edged closer towards the smoking body, squinting his eyes and watching in morbid fascination as it broke down in a matter of minutes, leaving a shrinking pile of ash that turned into embers that ate itself up until nothing remained.

 _What the_ hell _is happening?_

Naruto reached out, cautiously letting his shaking fingers edge ever closer to the beam of bright light shining down. Once the tips entered the beam, they began to smoke and smolder just the same as the body, blackening into ash. He shrieked once more, his first breath in over ten minutes (though he didn't quite note _that_ fact), and pulled back, moving as far away from the light as he possibly could. Clutching his pain-riddled hand, he watched as the ash-like parts of his fingers- and his arms, now that he thought about it- disappeared, replaced with fresh skin that looked like nothing had ever happened to them. Tilting his head down for a better look, Naruto was awarded with a handful of blond hair covered in ash. He stared at it for a second before it twigged in his mind that what he was looking at was _his scalp_. Dropping the bundle of hair and ash, where it was dragged away in the river of sludge, and reached both hands frantically atop his head, searching for the bald patch of skull, only to find nothing but a full mane of hair. His breathing became short and erratic, and he lowered his shaking hands down in front of him. Slumping back, Naruto let the slime-covered walls work with gravity to descend into a sitting position. Idly, his throat was even drier than before, and no amount of swallowing his spit would make it go away. He stared at his hands in growing horror.

" _What the hell is happening!_ " He shakily asked himself, mirroring his thoughts. "And why is it happening to _me_?"

His hands gave no answer, and he dropped them down to his sides and watched the river of sludge as it passed him by, the tiny ash pile occasionally giving off a pop or a crackle as it burned itself out. With no way to go out while the Sun was out, his only choice was to wait there until night- as the woman was able to walk around freely when it was dark out- and go to the Hokage for help. He knew that at this point, he'd missed the survival training test become a Genin, but he wasn't sure if he could even _be_ a ninja if sunlight was deadly to him. While he could still perform missions and train just as well at night, he'd be limited when the Sun came up, especially if he got in a fight with another ninja. Not to mention the times when his not having a heartbeat (a fact which nearly had Naruto digressing into a panic attack once more) would cause his teammates or Sensei to think he'd died.

Wiping one of his hands across his face and through his hair- and inadvertently coating his head with grime to match the rest of his body- Naruto sighed as he came to the only logical conclusion. He couldn't be a ninja. Not if sunlight could kill him. Not while he still had no heartbeat.

So, with that thought in mind, Naruto continued to sit there, his sandals brushing the edge of the river of sludge that slowly ebbed past him, waiting for the Sun to set, and he could go to the Hokage for help.

* * *

The day had been long, and Naruto had slowly moved closer and closer to the manhole as the amount of light coming down it decreased, bit by bit, until there was nothing, and he was left sitting directly underneath the open manhole, gazing up at the darkened sky.

"Come on..." He urged the disappearing Sun, not daring to climb up the ladder until the night sky was clear overhead. Minutes later, the sky was left various hues of indigo and black as the Sun finally disappeared over the horizon. "Yes!"

He jumped up, his hand gripping one of the rungs to stop his descent as gravity pulled him back down- only for the rung to crumple under his grip and snap off of the wall, following his descent back to the sewer below. Landing on his bare feet (for he'd discarded his sandals some time ago, as the feel of the sludge grinding against his feet and between his toes was disgusting and annoying), Naruto released his grip on the broken rung, revealing a detailed negative of his fingers, up to the little grooves that made up his fingerprints.

"GAH!" He tossed the rung into the sludge, where it sank beneath the murky surface. He looked down at he hands and gently wrapped his fingers around the lowest rungs before lightly clenching, hearing the groaning of the metal as it bent and buckled under the pressure he had never been capable of before. Releasing the rung, Naruto wisely chose not to grip the rungs _too_ tightly. Reaching up, he lightly took hold of one of the rungs higher up before putting his foot on one of the lower ones, preparing to climb up to the surface. As he hoisted his body weight up on the ladder, the rung beneath him gave way, making him instinctively clench onto the rung he was holding, which snapped in half under the sudden strain, causing Naruto to fall down into the sewer once more.

"Dammit..." He cursed, standing once more before gazing at the ladder in contemplation. Obviously, he'd just expected to use the rungs to heft his weight around, and didn't think to include his newfound strength in that plan. "Now how am I gonna do this?"

He ran through the what he could do that didn't involve his newly gotten strength, when a thought struck him. Grinning, Naruto crouched down before bouncing up high, reaching his hand up to grip the edge of the manhole. He slowly pulled himself up, confusion on his face at hearing what he swore was a waterfall. Of course, once he stuck his head out of the manhole, he was treated with the reason why he thought he'd heard a waterfall.

Sound of all kind assaulted his ears, from the _takka-takka_ of people walking through the streets to dozens of voices all speaking to and over each other, to the _tak-thump_ of Shinobi running over the rooftops, to the sound of dozens, if not hundreds, of enticing _thump-thumps_. The volley of sound was too much for Naruto to handle, and he clutched his ears to make the deafening roar of Konohagakure _quiet down_ , unwittingly falling down into the blissful silence of the sewer once more.

Rolling around on his back, Naruto clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut as the pain from all that noise went away, and he was left rubbing his ears to stave off the throbbing until he remembered.

_Right. No heartbeat means no throbbing._

Picking himself back up, he glared at the manhole above him, crouching down once more. Jumping again, Naruto hooked his fingers over the lip of the hole leading onto the alley, and Naruto could hear the 'waterfall' of noise once more. Hanging there, Naruto closed his eyes and concentrated. Hard.

 _Come on._ He silently chanted. _Come on..._

After what felt like forever, the 'waterfall' died down to a faint trickle, and Naruto felt safe enough to pull himself up into the alley. Glancing around, Naruto crouched low, looking for any sign of his fallen groceries. Spotting his bags near the end of the alley, Naruto ran over to them, picking through them and tossing out anything that had been spoiled from being left out in the elements for almost a day. When he was done, all that was left were the few vegetables and loaf of bread he'd bought. Pulling out an apple (of which he was always fond of, given the juicy nature of the fruit), Naruto felt his hunger, which had spread to dry out most of his mouth, groan and beg and plead him to appease it, so be took a huge bite of the apple.

"Gragh!" He spit out the bite, tossing the apple deep into the alley, before spitting out the juices that had remained in his mouth.

_That tasted horrible!_

Which confused him. He'd always like the juiciness and odd sweet flavor of apples, and knew that leaving them out in the open for at least a day didn't make them taste horrible- so why had that one tasted like ash? He didn't know, but was determined to find out why, once he-

_Thump-thump._

"Naruto?"

He turned around, barely noticing that it was his former Chunin teacher, Umino Iruka, who rushed towards him.

 _Thump-thump_ , _thump-thump._

Iruka was looking him over, babbling about how he'd missed his test and had run the risk of returning to the Academy and 'why was he so dirty', but he heard nothing of it, only the alluring call that was so close, yet so far.

_Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump._

Now Iruka was scolding him about something, but Naruto couldn't care less about that. He wanted, no, _needed_ to find it. But where was it?

_Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump._

There!

Naruto was barely in control of his actions, and he didn't even feel when Iruka had hugged him, only being overjoyed when he'd finally found what he needed. His canine elongated, to make the process of getting it easier on him. Once he pinpointed where best to attack, he struck.

"...to? Naruto? Are you- gack!" Iruka gagged, but Naruto didn't care- he'd found what he'd needed. The glorious liquid flowed into his mouth, down his throat and into his stomach, filling it up with the velvety red liquid and sating his Hunger. He'd needed to feed, and nothing else would satisfy his Hunger. Nothing.

He placed his hand over the mouth of the prey, the noises it was making were much too annoying for him to bear, and within seconds the prey's flailing slowed until it stopped altogether. Naruto, however, kept feeding, feeling himself get better, stronger, more lively with each mouthful of the red lifeblood, until he could take no more, and the prey could give no more, and left the prey empty, the dead husk lying on the ground. Standing over it, Naruto licked his lips, taking in any stray drops that he hadn't yet consumed, spreading them all across his tongue and letting the flavor tease and taunt him with it's inconceivable beauty and perfection.

By the time he came back to his senses, Naruto had almost forgotten that Iruka had been tending to him before he'd attacked the prey and consumed his fill.

"Oh, Iruka-Sensei!" He greeted, turning to joyously greet the kind Chunin. "Thank god you're here! I need to go see-"

The words died in his throat when he realized that what he was staring at was an empty alley, and turned around in confusion, looking for the Chunin until a thought struck him.

_No..._

Slowly turning his head, he looked down at the prey he'd just taken down, and gasped at seeing the lifeless eyes of Umino Iruka gaze back at him. The skin had pulled back against the muscles and bones, like it had been relinquished of all fluids. The clothes hung loosely over the dead Chunin, despite having fit him to perfection mere moments earlier.

"No..." Naruto whispered, stepping back. What had he done? Screw going to the Hokage for help, he'd just killed Iruka-Sensei! Nothing he did would matter, since he'd just killed another ninja of Konoha.

 _Oh god, what's happened to me?_ He frantically thought, turning and running away. Away from the body, from the sewer, from the life he used to live. He ran, and continued running, as fast as he could, dully noticing that the people and shops around him were little more than slow moving objects as he entered the forests on the outer edge of Konoha. He kept running, not stopping, running with such speed that he seemed to walk up the wall on the edge of Konohagakure, jumping down into the forests outside, running as far from it as possible.

And so, Uzumaki Naruto, Genin candidate of Konoha, died, along with his Academy teacher, Umino Iruka.


	3. Egression

Naruto's feet pounded against the trees in a manner much to powerful for them to take, leaving a trail of broken branches and footprints embedded within the trunks in his wake. He supposed that at the speed he was going, his heart, had it still been beating, would be pounding in his ears, mingling with the roar of the wind as he swiftly moved through the air in a speed he had previously been incapable of. Of course, with no heartbeat pounding in his ears, Naruto's chest didn't feel constricted as it usually did when he was running, and so didn't take to gulping in air by the mouthful. Flying through the air, Naruto felt the wind against his skin, almost tickling him with the way it seemed to curl around his body and push against it, propelling him forward at an even faster rate.

Within seconds of passing over the wall, Naruto had felt himself passing through some kind of wall, like the air had constricted around him, trying to prevent him from continuing. This wall of air was unlike the wind around it, and clung to him, working to slow him down instead of speed him up. The patch of enemy air was pulled with him, and he barely felt the rubber-band-like pull futilely working to send him back towards Konoha. Landing on a branch, Naruto started to relax his muscles when the tree limb broke off, plunging him towards the ground in what felt like the slowest fall ever. Naruto twisted around, snagging the broken branch and adjusting it so that it would land point down while he lightly tapped down on the balls of his feet. All around him, leaves and bits of the broken limb fell around him, never on him, in a perfect circle. Within the circle, the dust shifted in twirling wind around the teen, causing the bits and pieces to corkscrew with the wind around Naruto and join their brethren on the ground around him.

Naruto stood still, holding the think branch in his hand, and looked back towards Konoha. If what the pull of that wall of air was what he thought it was, Naruto knew that this right here was the point of no return. Would he head back to the village he grew up in, living in seclusion and under scrutiny because of what had happened to him, what he'd done? Or would he turn around and leave, quite possibly never to return?

If he returned, Naruto had no doubts about what would happen- he'd be locked up and put on trial for killing Iruka-Sensei (something that he still felt conflicted about), and would have to wrestle with the urge to consume and silence the tantalizing _thump-thumps_ for the rest of his existence while the Hokage and medics searched for a cure. If there was one. Of course, such a life would not be one easily lived by him, who would feel the encroaching need to be out in the open, only for him to have to suppress that urge, lest he go after all of his old classmates. And while Sasuke _was_ a little stuck-up, not even Naruto could wish what had happened to him happen to the reclusive boy. And if he'd come across Sakura... Naruto quickly shook the image of Sakura's dead body lying in front of him instead of Iruka-Sensei's from his head.

Leaving seemed the better option. He'd be able to separate himself from society as much as possible, while seeking out anyone who could potentially help figure out what had happened to him. Not to mention he'd be able to protect anyone else from having what had happened to him happen to them.

_Thump-thump._

"Don't move." A voice hissed in his ears from behind, cold, sharp metal pressing against his throat. Naruto's eyes began to glaze over, yet instead of becoming a dull sheen, they seemed to gain in intensity, almost glowing.

_Thump-thump._

There it was again. That tantalizing sound, and Naruto idly was reminded of what had happened mere minutes before with Iruka-Sensei, and was able to retain enough of his mind in time to feel the prey press the long metal strip- a sword, he idly noted- push against the skin of his neck.

"Why are you trying to leave Konoha unauthorized?" The man- for that deep a voice could not belong to anything less- asked, his voice oddly distorted and muffled, like he was wearing something over his face.

Naruto reacted instantaneously, kicking back and into the man, twisting his torso in ways that would normally be performed by people with years of physical conditioning, grabbing the outstretched arm. Letting his legs drop down, Naruto slid down and through the ANBU's- for it could be no other, with the odd white mask over the man's face- legs, only for the man to jump and spin his body, a Kunai in his free hand plunging down towards Naruto's head. Watching in slow motion, the Kunai fell subject to the protective layer of wind that diverted the weapon's fall into the ground next to Naruto's head. Kicking up, Naruto aimed to incapacitate the ANBU with a hard kick to the man's side, only for the masked ninja to explode into the broken branch, which exploded into splinters when Naruto's leg was found to be encased in that almost sentient wind.

_NOW!_

Naruto started running away from Konoha once more, the pull of the barrier no longer affecting his speed as he continued running away from Konoha and the ANBU- who was clearly following him, if the rhythmic _thump-thump_ of the man's heartbeat, pounding like a drum, in the trees above him was any indication. Suddenly, the heartbeat stopped, and Naruto halted in his tracks, looking all around him in confusion. The forest was deathly silent, even to Naruto's enhanced hearing, and he was left wondering where the ANBU had gone.

" _Gotcha!_ " The voice came from below, and Naruto felt himself being yanked down into the ground, hands wrapped around his ankles.

"Oh, no you don't!" Naruto growled, his fingers curling into claws and stabbing into the ground, where he gripped the porcelain mask of the ANBU, and used it to yank the man up out of the ground, where the ANBU's heartbeat could be heard once more. Catching the attempt to kick him, Naruto's mind let his instincts begin to take over, and with a single flick of his wrist broke the man's leg, angling it in a position where the sole was facing the mask. The ANBU stopped his string of hand seals, and Naruto heard muffled screaming, but was too far gone in his instincts to care as he released his grip on the mask, following up with a heel drop that audibly shattered both of the man's arms. Kicking the ANBU into the air, Naruto felt the ribs cracking before moving to intercept the man's fall, bringing his knee up into the spine, which snapped, making a sound not too dissimilar to when a rubber-band snapped. Letting the man fall to the ground, Naruto watched on in some form of pleasure before he was brought back to reality by the strangled moans the ANBU was emitting.

"Oh, god. What have I _done_?" Naruto moaned, staggering away from the twitching, moaning form. He didn't do this, he _couldn't_ do this. He _would never_ do this, just mangle another person like that and leave them in so much pain. Why would he even feel pleased in his actions?

_Because he attacked me and deserved what he got._

Naruto shivered when he realized that that thought had come from him. Did this man really deserve what had happened to him? Was he in the right for fatally injuring the ANBU like this?

Looking down, Naruto felt the hunger return, and was nearly overcome with the desire to consume the ANBU's blood.

_What's happening to me?_

He couldn't just feed on the man, as it would surely kill the man, not to mention just how _wrong_ it was to consume blood like, like-

But neither could he, in good conscious, leave the man to die. They had moved quite some distance from Konoha, despite being fairly close, and it was unlikely that anyone would find him until long after he died, so perhaps...

No. Naruto wasn't the type of person to just kill someone to end their misery, even if they would be better off because of it. Taking on last look at the man, Naruto cursed.

He couldn't leave the man to die alone, and in so much pain.

He gave into his instincts, feeling his canines as they elongated and push against his lips, feeling them puncture the man's neck, before he lost himself in the taste and feel of the blood as he consumed it. It was thick, yet smooth, and tasted... Naruto didn't know if there was a word to describe the pure elation that spread throughout his entire body like bliss personified. It was like... every single nerve in his body was screaming in joy for simply existing, and he moaned into the feeling, wishing it would never end. He shuddered and reveled into it, the taste (and feeling that came with) of the blood, which flowed through his mouth and down his esophagus like velvet, leaving just enough of itself behind to tease and antagonize him until the next mouthful. This continued on, and Naruto was nearly on the verge of passing out from overstimulation when his eyes rolled back into his head and his entire body screamed in complete and utter pleasure, and the dead husk of the ANBU fell to the ground, breaking apart as soon as it hit the dirt. Laying there, Naruto slowly came down from this high, and looked down at the crumbling husk in a strange combination of horror and annoyance. Horror for having felt so, so... he didn't know what that feeling was called. Annoyance that the ANBU wasn't able to make him feel that way again. He wanted, no, _needed_ to feel it again, the experience sparking the beginnings of a burning desire that was almost as strong as his hunger, which had since abated into nothing.

Standing up, Naruto's legs nearly gave out, too weak from that high to properly hold his weight at first, and he was forced to use a nearby tree (which gained several deep handprints in the bark) to steady himself as he stood up on progressively more steady legs, emotionally wrestling between horror and annoyance.

Eventually, horror won out, and Naruto was left running away from Konoha once more, moving towards the mountains of the northwest. At his speed, he probably wouldn't make it to the mountains before sun-up, but would at least be able to find a good cave to crawl into and hide deep within until the Sun set once more. He'd hide in the mountains, staying in the caves there, and would figure where to best go from there. Maybe that one place, with all that rain? It certainly would be cloudy enough for him to hide out there, maybe seek someone to help him...

_Help how?_

The question was so simple, yet intimately complex. He had no clue what was going on, and knew even less about what kind of help was needed. So where was he gonna go for answers?

Konoha was out of the question- he'd just fled from there, and had killed two of their Shinobi. Even if he was able to explain what had happened, why would they believe him?

Given the dark skin of the woman, he contemplated going north, into the Land of Lightning for answers, before dismissing that idea. The woman, while most likely hailing from there, probably wasn't the kind to have been high-profile enough for there to be any kind of records for her- and even if there were, Naruto knew nothing about her to even have a hint of a clue where to start.

Suna was obviously out of the question- most of the Land of Wind was one big desert, and that meant instant death for him at the moment.

Iwa, while tempting due to all those legends of an archival of all things pertaining to Shinobi, including accounts of the very first chakra users and countless forbidden (and forgotten) jutsu, wasn't a place Naruto was eager to go to. The Archives of Iwagakure, while most helpful in this situation, would take too long to find and search.

Kiri- Naruto didn't know enough about the place to even dare go there, as it had always been rather closed off from the rest of the Elemental Nations.

Which just left that one place with all the rain- Amegakure, if he remembered right. It perpetually rained, so he could chance moving around in the daytime, and was secluded enough that Naruto could hide out there while he worked through and fixed whatever that woman had done to him.

 _To Amegakure._ Naruto thought with conviction, continuing his speedy trek Northwest. After all, there wasn't anything or anyone there that knew about him.


	4. The Five Stages

The sight of Gobi's Pass was one of the more breathtaking views of the northwestern edge of the Land of Fire, bordering the Land of Rain. It's deep, carving, curling crags, canyons, and crevasses the result of a massive battle that upturned the once-pristine forest during the First Great Shinobi World War. In the battle, the first Jinchuuriki of the Gobi, the eldest daughter of the Shodai Tsuchikage, had helped carve a swath through the Land of Rain- a force that had inadvertently led Hanzo to become the fearsome leader of Amegakure within two decades. Hanzo, but a mere child at the time, had become fascinated with the almighty power that Iwagakure held, and privately made it his life's goal to become stronger that the shadowed figure of a miniature Gobi exhaling a deadly poisonous gas down upon the hapless Shinobi who tried to stop it, the potency ranging from outright killing them to paralyzing them. Hanzo would barely remember this, but it was that moment, when he mistakenly believed the miniature Gobi to be a salamander, that led to him becoming one of the most feared and powerful Shinobi to ever exist. After passing through the Land of Rain, the Gobi's Jinchuuriki was met with a specialized task force led by none other than the future Nidaime Hokage, Senju Tobirama, whose mastery of Water Chakra along with several of his own deadly jutsu were able to push the woman to her limits, causing her to overdraw on the Gobi's Yokai and release it into the area, where it lashed out violently, the strikes from it's tails carving out the ground into the enormous chasms before it was taken down and sealed again in a special pot and taken back to Iwa by the man who would, within a year, become the Nidaime Tsuchikage, and his student, the boy who would grow up to be the Sandaime Tsuchikage.

However, Naruto didn't have the time to stop and admire the view- the sky was pitch-black, the sliver of moon gone with the stars, signaling the encroaching dawn. He ran through the trees frantically, searching for any sign of a cave big enough- and deep enough- for him to hide out in until dusk. Behind him, a clear path of broken branches and foot- and handprints upon the bark of the trees, making a direct beeline right at him. Stopping his propulsion forward, Naruto slammed his feet into the trunk of a tree, which buckled under the strain and, had it not been for his quick reflexes, fell down, a shower of splinters, bark and leaves covering the area. Shaking his head, Naruto pulled several leaves and pieces of bark that had made their way into his hair, fingering them in his hand before noticing the swath of destruction he'd left in his wake. The leaves fell from between his fingers, floating down to the ground at his feet, but he took no notice of them, his eyes fixated on the clear trail leading directly to him that he'd inadvertently created. A trail that could easily lead Konoha-nin right at him- where they would lock him up for killing two fellow Shinobi and perform tests on him.

_Fuck!_

Glancing to his left- where it was a sheer drop-off into one of the chasms- Naruto made a split-second decision, jumping down into the chasm. Hopefully, the sudden disappearance of a trail would slow down any pursuers long enough for him to find some way to get further away. As he fell deeper into the darkness, he began to panic, thinking that this was all a big mistake and maybe he should turn around and head back to Konoha and hopefully the Sandaime would understand that it was all a horrible misunderstanding and-

_No._

He'd made his choice already. He'd had enough chances to go the Sandaime, but here, at the edge of dawn, Naruto had long since passed the point of no return. Had passed it before killing the ANBU. Had passed it before hitting the barrier. Had passed it before scaling the wall around Konoha. He'd hit the point of no return the moment he'd reeled back away from Iruka-Sensei's body, and had ran. Naruto had had the chance to stay there, waiting for someone to have found him curled in the fetal position mere feet from Iruka's body, where he would have blindly attacked them as well, and would have continued fighting until someone had managed to kill him- probably the Hokage, since he'd been able to take out an ANBU without much strain, and they were supposed to be the strongest Shinobi of Konoha aside from the Hokage!

 _I don't want to die._ Naruto silently told the world. _Again_. He added, seeing as, with his heart no longer beating, he couldn't say he was ' _alive_ ', yet since he hadn't gone on to the afterlife, he wasn't exactly ' _dead_ '. He was just-

WHAM!

The ground, Naruto learned, _hurt_ after hitting it from a great height. Picking himself up out of the small crater he'd made, Naruto dragged himself across the ground while his battered and broken body healed itself up, the faintest hints of hunger tickling his throat that was easily ignored. In a little over a minute, Naruto's body was completely healed, and he was laying against a rock near a slowly moving river, the water coursing south in a steady pace.

Testing his legs, Naruto slowly used the rock the pick himself up onto his legs while the sky began to lighten from black to a dark indigo. When he was fully upright, Naruto put more weight on his legs until he was standing on his own. Looking down at his legs warily, Naruto slowly raised one of them, taking a steady step forward. Following that up with a similar thing with his next leg, Naruto looked at them in surprise before bending his knees and jumping in the air several times. Shrugging, Naruto passed it off as another side effect from whatever had happened to him before noticing the lightening sky.

"Crap!" He exclaimed, looking around wildly for a cave that could safely hide him from both the Sun and the search parties Konoha would undoubtedly send out after him. Seeing nothing, Naruto started moving north, twisting his head to and fro, Naruto saw nothing outside of the tiny little holes that would barely fit him, and were too shallow to allow him to safely hide there away from the Sun and any pursuers. All he saw were the rough walls of the chasm, which were too sheer for anything even remotely resembling a safe hole. "Crap, crap crap crap crap!" He screamed to the oncoming dawn. "Just a few more minutes! Please!"

And then he heard it.

It started off as a faint thrumming sound, off above him, until it was a near-deafening roar, and Naruto was mobbed by hundreds and hundreds of-

_Bats?_

The tiny creatures were the cause of the thrumming, which, if Naruto listened closely, was the sound of all of their heartbeats together. Individually, the sound was like a tinier, faster version of the tantalizing _thump-thump_ , but when all of them were together...

"Wow..." Naruto breathed, the bats flying around and past him, almost working to guide him, gently nudging him towards something. Deciding, in the throes of his auditory euphoria, to follow them, moving with the massive group. His eyes half-lidded, Naruto was nearly lost to the world as he let the bats guide him, the combination of their wings and hearts beating together a sound that had him experiencing a lighter version of the high that the ANBU's blood had incited in him, until the flapping, squeaking, and thrumming dissipated, bringing Naruto back to the present, where the sky was now a purple-ish blue, and lightening by the second. Looking around for the bats, Naruto saw them flying into the wall of the chasm, where a tiny shrub grew. After a second of realization, he grinned toothily, an action much more sinister with his glowing eyes and less tanned skin. "Awesome!"

Gripping the rough wall, Naruto was careful not to crush any of the jutting ledges that he used as hand- and footholds, until he was outside of the cave. Looking at it, Naruto would have completely missed it, the small entrance hidden by the shrub, which was thick enough to keep the Sun from penetrating it. Inside, Naruto could hear the cacophony of noise that was the giant group of bats, and he crawled in after feeling the back of his head start to tingle from the early morning rays.

Inside, the cave was much, _much_ bigger. The ground was soft, and descended down in an amazing way, littered with the bones of dead bats and crawling with rats, beetles, spiders and other such insects, which fed on the gray gunk spread over the ground, with more of it falling from the ever-moving bats above. Looking down at the ground- which he realized was covered in the excrement of all of those bats- Naruto took one last glance at the tiny hole he'd just come from, before stepping forward. Immediately, Naruto's presence had all the insects and rats moving away from him as he approached, giving him a wide berth as he walked over the bat guano- which he steadfastly ignored the feeling it gave him as it stuck to the soles of his feet, as he'd already experienced the equivalent of much worse in the sewer. Reaching one of the walls of the cave, Naruto climbed it until he reached a ledge, which he claimed as his for the duration of his stay there. Setting back against the wall, Naruto laid there and listened to the noise of the bats, which was echoing in the confines of the cave, their squeaks and squeals all raised to a volume that would have anyone else clutching their ears in pain, but not Naruto. Naruto just listened to the bats communicating to each other, a cacophonous sound that, combined with the thrumming of their beating wings and heartbeats, both soothed and excited him, a strange contradiction that sent him into a Zen-like state of mind. With his mind like that, Naruto began to really take in everything that occurred in the last day.

He'd died, that much was certain, from the absence of his own beating heart, something that had originally had him quite nervous, but now seemed like it was meant to happen,which unnerved him in a whole new light. Why was he so calm about it? His heart wasn't beating, wasn't pumping his own blood through his body, and he wasn't as scared about it as he should have been- so _why_? Why was he so calm about it? Did it have anything to do with why the thought of consuming blood wasn't as disgusting an idea as it should have been?

He'd eaten blood, which tasted like the most delicious food he'd ever had, and seemed to be the only thing he was capable of eating. The apple had tasted like ash, and while he hadn't been able to eat any meat, the thought doing so just sickened him to his stomach at the thought of eating something meant for dogs. As if he would sink so low!

 _Where'd_ that _come from?_

Next fact- he'd seemed to have begun thinking of people as prey instead of actual people, and from that last exclamation, hated dogs and the like with a passion, which was odd, considering he'd always been kinda fond of dogs with their loyalty, the way they're always there when you need cheering up, the annoying way they howl at the moon, that damned stubborn streak of theirs, always hunting down anything and everything that made life fun and ruining it...

_Right. Don't like dogs anymore. Got it._

Looking over the bats, Naruto's thoughts strayed to the next fact.

The Sun was deadly to him, a lesson learned the hard- and admittedly painful- way. While this didn't really affect him directly, it certainly made it hard to be a ninja, if he could only travel around at night. Of course, it might be possible to traverse in the Sunlight hidden underneath something, like a cloak or-

_Of course!_

Putting his hands in the basic ram seal, Naruto tried to gather chakra, only to find nothing. Frowning, he dived further into himself, reaching for the slightest hint of _anything_ , and finding nothing. Snapping his eyes open, he brought them down, the glowing eyes seemed to dim.

_Right. No heartbeat means not alive. Not alive means dead. Dead means no chakra._

Wait.

He now had incredible strength and could heal from just about anything, if that fall earlier was any indication. But the downside was that he had no way of controlling this strength of his. The trek to Gobi's Pass was enough of an indication of that.

But how did he have that strength and healing if he no longer had chakra?

The question stumped him, and he was left wondering just _what_ Naruto was now. He wasn't human anymore, despite looking and (mostly) acting like one. He wasn't a ninja, couldn't _be_ a ninja if he had to worry about killing the client- or even his own teammates, if Sakura and Sasuke were liable to forgive him if he was ever able to return back to normal.

_Back to normal..._

The simple phrase was anything but. _If_ he was able to become human once more, could he really just continue his life as he had before? Could he really just ignore having been killed by that woman, killing Iruka-Sensei-

Oh god.

He'd killed Iruka-Sensei.

He'd killed the one person who'd openly told him that he was _someone_ , that he deserved to _be_ someone others cared about.

He'd killed Iruka-Sensei, and ran.

Iruka-Sensei was gone, and there was no one left who would and could stand up for him if he ever went back to Konoha.

He'd _killed_ Iruka-Sensei.

Naruto blinked his eyes, reaching up to wipe away the tears- only to find there were no tears to clear away. His vision was perfect- more than perfect even, since he could see every single detail of the cave as though it were the light of day- and no trails of salty liquid lined his cheeks, his nose didn't feel clogged, his throat wasn't closing up on him and feeling like a lump now inhabited it.

He didn't feel tired.

He'd spent the last twenty-four hours awake (half of it running non-stop) and he wasn't tired, or sore, or exhausted, or thirsty, or hungry, or needed to relieve himself, or anything.

Hell, he hadn't even taken a breath since crashing into the ground, and didn't feel dizzy, didn't have black spots dancing across his vision, which didn't have darkness closing in on it giving him tunnel vision.

And then it hit him, really hit him, just what he was.

He wasn't human.

Naruto... wasn't human anymore.

Naruto wasn't... human anymore.

He wasn't human, and he wasn't capable of crying or using chakra or _having_ chakra, wasn't capable of walking out during the day without dying for real, didn't have a heartbeat or need to breath or sleep or eat food, yet he did need to eat but-

Naruto scaled down the wall, grabbing one of the rats before it could run away fast enough, biting into it and ripping it in half, intestines, blood, skin and fur in his mouth, before he spat them out, retching, his stomach heaving so hard the entirety of his body shook.

But he couldn't eat anything without it tasting like ash or making him violently gag.

The only thing he _could_ eat was blood.

What _was_ he?

" _What am I?_ " He whispered into the air, mirroring his thoughts.

The creatures of the cave had no answer for him.

Crawling back up onto the ledge, Naruto stayed there, his brain running on autopilot.

"I'm human." He told himself, almost desperately. "I like ramen, I have a crush on Sakura, I don't like raw vegetables, my dream is to be Hokage, I'm a Genin with two teammates, Haruno Sakura and Uchiha Sasuke, and a weird Jonin-Sensei, Hatake Kakashi. I'm 12 years old, my birthday's on October tenth, I'm the container for the Kyuubi," He flinched a little at that proclamation, having not really gotten to terms with it. "I'm an orphan of Konoha, my parents died before I was born, and I'm _human_." He repeated, his voice overcome with desperation. "My favorite color is orange, and I'm human. I'm human, I'm human, I'm human, I'M HUMAN!" He screamed into the cave, sending the bats into a frenzy. "My name is Uzumaki Naruto and I'm _human_!"

His heart would have- _should have been_ pounding after that, but there was nothing, as it would always be.

"I'm human." He kept telling himself. "I'm human and always will be. I'm just dreaming, and when I wake up, it'll be time for me to go join Sakura and Sasuke in taking Kakashi-Sensei's survival test. That's right." Naruto falsely reassured himself, laughing slightly. "I'm dreaming. This is all a dream and I'll wake up any second now." He waited, the false hope dying as the seconds ticked by, the only sounds those of the bats as they communicated with each other. "Any second now my alarm will go off." He told himself, more forcefully this time. Again he was met with the cacophony of the bats. "Any second now." He repeated, nearly ordering himself to wake up. "Dammit wake up!" Naruto pounded his head in his hands, "Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, WAKE UP!" He cried, wanting so dearly to cry, yet no tears came to him. "Wake up, dammit. Wake up." He continued, curling into a ball and repeating the phrase like a mantra. "Wake up."

But there was no alarm, no encompassing black signaling his waking, nothing.

"Wake up..."

Nothing happened, and he kept waiting, the seconds turning to minutes, until it had nearly been an hour, and he was still like that.

"No." Naruto suddenly said. "No, this- this can't happen to me. I'm Uzumaki Naruto, future Hokage. This kinda stuff _doesn't_ happen to me. _Can't_ happen to me." He looked around the cave, watching the bats fly by him. "So why me?" He asked the air. "Why, out of everyone else in the world, did this have to happen to _me_? Why not any of my other classmates, or even one of the people that lived on that street. Why me, dammit? Why me and not one of them? What, was it just fate then, that I was the one who got attacked by that woman, huh? Why me? Why?" The cave once more gave no answer to him, and his anger reached new levels. "WHY ME? WHY NOT ANY ONE OF THOSE OTHER PEOPLE THAT I PASSED ON THAT STREET? WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT ME? WHAT'S SO SPECIAL THAT _I'M_ THE ONE ROBBED OF A LIFE? HUH? WHAT? TELL ME!" He broke down once more, curling into a ball once more, and not moving for the rest of the day. "Just tell me." He said every once on a while, lost in his own world, voice neither broken nor raspy.

By that point, he'd entered the fourth stage of death- depression- and remained that way.

After all, who could ever accept losing everything, even their lives, on a chance accident? And why would a child ever accept losing the life they never got a chance to live?

Uzumaki Naruto certainly couldn't.


	5. Nihilism

Uzumaki Naruto stood at the precipice of existence and nonexistence, staring into down at each with great longing. On one end, he had existence- his life, his friends, his teammates and Sensei, old man Sandaime, Konohamaru, his dream of becoming Hokage, and everything that he was and could ever have been. On the other end was nonexistence- the afterlife, where his parents were waiting for him, and all the love and peace of mind he'd never had in his life. Between the two was were he was, neither existing nor being nonexistent, and of the two, had the opportunity to chose only one.

Which was why he stood before the crawlspace leading out of the cave and into the light of day. He knew it was still day from the little bright spots that danced across his vision and made his eyes itch (an itch that was from his eyes healing themselves and were dispatching of the ashes that had been made of the pieces of ruined eye). The light itself wasn't very bright, as it was nearing dusk of his second day in the cave.

Ever since his breakdown, Naruto had moved and just stood looking at the roots and branches of the greenery that hid the entrance from outside view. He'd thought nothing, said nothing, and had not moved at all. Underneath his feet, the buildup of bat guano and insects were squished down under his weight, causing him to sink down to his ankles. The only things going through his mind were of concepts he could barely understand.

He wasn't human, but didn't feel any different than before. And yet, everything about him was different- he couldn't eat any of the foods he used to, his body could move and function much differently than it had before. Could the being he was now even be called Uzumaki Naruto? Could he be a Naruto who ate blood, had no heartbeat, couldn't see the sun again, couldn't even be a ninja, let alone Hokage? Or was he someone- some _thing_ completely different? Something that wasn't Uzumaki Naruto, yet was so much like him?

But that wasn't right.

He remembered being Uzumaki Naruto, and knew that he was once such a person who existed, proving that he _was_ Uzumaki Naruto, at least on some level. The question was, was he _still_ Uzumaki Naruto, or was he just some empty body of a dead person given life? What little he- No, what little Naruto (for until he figured out who and what he was, he could not go by the name of someone he may not be; It would be dishonorable to go about his 'life' being called by the name of someone who had mattered to somebody) knew about the human body, the brain kept the memories of the person even after death. It wasn't until the body began to decay that those memories were lost. Knowing that (and knowing that he might simply have stolen knowledge from a dead child instead of any real life of his own), it brought into question not just what he was, but _who_ he was as well.

He knew, from Naruto's memories (even though the boy wasn't paying attention, it was still a part of his memory and could be recalled with enough concentration), that chakra was an essential part of the human life, made of both physical and spiritual energies. Since he had no chakra, that meant that he had no soul- the birthplace of spiritual energy. And if he had no soul, and he wasn't human, then he was just an empty body and the real Uzumaki Naruto was dead, leaving him as just a reanimated body with the same thoughts and memories of a dead person.

Whoever or whatever had brought him into creation was one sick, perverse creature.

So he was Uzumaki Naruto, and at the same time he wasn't- a complex answer to a simple question: 'Are you Uzumaki Naruto?'. He couldn't say he was (the real Naruto was dead and gone), and he couldn't say he wasn't (as he was just as much Naruto as the pre-teen was), leaving him on the precipice of existence and nonexistence. Was or was not, that is the question. And he was the sole exception to it, a being that neither existed nor was nonexistent. The road to existence had ended for him when his (or was it Uzumaki Naruto's?) heart stopped beating, while nonexistence was still so very much open and capable of being the path he could take.

Which was why he was standing there, blinking the ashes out of his eyes. The release of death- _true_ death- was but several steps away, and there was nothing keeping him from taking it.

Raising his foot, he took a step forward. His muscles never protested the sudden movement after being stationary for so long. It was further reassurance that what he was doing was the right thing.

He took another step forward.

Then another.

And another.

The movement drew the attention of the bats, which were busy aiding their young in learning to fly. Suddenly, as if sensing the inherent danger of what he was about to do, the bats swarmed around Naruto, halting all movement from the blond. As one, they created a whirling vortex of flapping, chirping bodies, making a cylindrical wall with which to contain the suicidal blond. Within the vortex, Naruto was lowering hands that had been raised to protect his head from the bats. Looking at the mass angrily, he began shouting at them.

"WHY?" He called to them. "There's nothing for me to live for. I don't even know who I am anymore!"

The bats, in response, pushed closer to him, forcing Naruto to step back.

"Don't! Stop! No!" Naruto screamed. "JUST LET ME DIE!"

The bats pushed ever closer, and Naruto kept moving backwards, his feet stumbling over the thick guano-laden rock. One misstep was all it took to send him sprawling on his back, sinking ever-so-slightly into the miasma of guano and insects. The cylinder became a dome encircling the flailing blond, shrinking slightly to restrict his movements before breaking apart, the bats returning to what they were doing before the intervention.

Naruto, however, had barely noted the dispersal, having been more preoccupied with the dozen or so little baby bats that now clung to him for survival, too young and too weak to properly fly. If he stepped out into the sunlight, the babies would die- either from the fall or from the fire as he burned to ashes. It didn't matter whether or not he was Uzumaki Naruto, he was not a being that could carelessly kill such innocent creatures to satisfy his own needs.

"Get- get off." He weakly told them, knowing that it was a pointless gesture- there was no way the bats could understand him. However, the young bats clinging to him appeared to look _right at him_ and shake their heads, as if telling him that they didn't want him dead- for real this time. He deftly dismissed this as a trick of the light and tried to gently (well, as gently as an not-dead, not-alive thing with extreme strength could be) remove their grip from the grimy rags that used to be his clothes, only to receive several angry screeches from what were presumably the parents.

With little choice else, Naruto simply stared at the young bats forlornly. The babies, in response, huddled up against him. He wouldn't- _couldn't_ kill them, and leaving them on the cave floor amongst the beetles and rats and other carrion creatures would kill them just as much as if they were still on Naruto when he died for real. He could do nothing until they were removed (which he suspected might not happen until after dusk). They were defenseless creatures that barely knew what to do to survive, acting only on instinct- like him.

_Wait._

He was like a baby, having little control over what he could do. He was under no fault for his actions, right? Babies couldn't be held accountable for what they did since they didn't know what they were doing was wrong, and since he was practically a baby whatever-he-was (despite being a preteen), he couldn't really be to blame for his actions, right?

_But that doesn't make it any less wrong..._

Naruto winced at that last thought, and his thoughts then went down a darker path- even if ( _if!_ ) he could return to normal, he already knew what he would face if he returned to Konoha. He couldn't- _could never_ return to his home. Isolation in the Land of Rain was the only thing he could look forward to. Isolation until he died, or was able to locate and travel to the Archives of Iwagakure.

The reminder that there existed a place that could possibly make him human again dispelled any thoughts of suicide from Naruto's mind. He now knew what needed to be done.

From between the leaves of the bush at the entrance, the light shining into the cave dimmed into nothing. Above and around Naruto, the bats began to take flight, knowing that it was dusk, and the time to hunt was upon them once more. The sudden resurgence of the cacophony of the beating of bat wings, the timpani beat of their hearts, and the screeches and chirps they used to communicate and guide them sent Naruto into a sort of dazed trance (the same trance as before), barely noticing when a number of the bats surrounded him and plucked the babies off of him, returning the young bats to their rightful place in their nests under the watchful eyes of their parents. When he finally snapped out of his daze, Naruto looked up at the writing mass of bats with a sort of fondness.

"Thank you." He whispered. "I don't want to die... again."

Uzumaki Naruto's resolve was back, and he was on the slow road to acceptance- and recovery.


	6. Asphyxiation

Naruto pulled himself out of the cavern through the tiny entrance, pushing the bush aside as the resident bats flocked out around him to begin their hunt. With his preteen form covered in sludge, caked in dirt and smeared with guano, he was like a creature from those horror stories that civilian children were told about to obey their parents.

He gazed out at the ground, nearly two dozen feet below, and drew his eyesight towards the southeast; towards Konoha. His ears picked up the distant voices of what could only be the squad of Konoha-nin sent after him, having clearly followed the messy path he'd made in his fit of fear. Glancing down, he nearly let out a nonexistent sigh of relief – the trail had thankfully stopped at the edge of the cliff leading down into the crevasse he was in. Even if they were able to climb down to the bottom safely, all the squad would find would be the crater where he had landed and a trail of ash that would lead them in this direction (which wasn't a promise that the squad would even find him, as there were several adjacent crags and valleys that branched off of the presumed main one; The probability that the squad wouldn't follow the river flowing through the center of the crevasse was slim).

Pausing, Naruto looked at the cliff face, and then at the ground below. If he climbed down, it would be time lost in fleeing away from the squad into the Land of Rain. Conversely, if he chose the quickest way down (falling), then the resultant landing would almost certainly garner the notice of at least one of the squad members, not to mention he would be injured and wouldn't be able to-

Oh, right.

He had fallen down from the top of the cliff, and had walked away with no injury seconds after landing. If he had fallen from this height, the bruised and broken bones would be healed by the time the pain would be felt.

His eyes went went from the cliff-side, to the ground, and back again. Climb or fall, Climb or fall?

If he climbed, it would be slow going (made even slower by ensuring that he didn't accidentally obliterate his hand- or footholds). If he fell, it would be faster, but the crash landing ran the risk of gaining the attention of the Konoha-nin.

Naruto shrugged.

_What the hell? I'll be healed long before they even begin to move here..._

Naruto leaped out of his crouch, instinctively pulling all of his limbs close to protect from worse injury, and let gravity pull him down to the ground.

The landing, as it was, was considerably less painful that he'd thought it to be.

Snapping one of his shin bones back into place, Naruto groaned at the itchy feeling of the internal injury healing by fading into ash, only for the itchiness to subside as soon as it began. He blinked and raised an eyebrow at that, wondering what happened to all the ash made by internal injuries. Did his body 'digest' the ash, or was it something completely different, like the ash being used to fix the-

Naruto gagged, wrapping his arms around his stomach as he felt nauseated, like there was something trying to get out of him. The gagging turning into dry-heaving, and Naruto felt like his stomach was trying to come out through his throat. Dropping to all fours, Naruto heaved and writhed, his abdomen tried to curl in on itself, giving whatever was trying to leave him greater force. With one final gagging heave, a gray-white wave of ash poured out of his mouth, piling up on the ground beneath his writhing form.

He stared at the pile in disgust as the heaving and pain faded away. _This_ was what happened to the ash from internal injuries?

"...ew." Naruto finally said. "That... ew."

Getting up to his feet, Naruto tentatively poked at the pile of ash with his foot, before cringing away as if expecting something to happen. When nothing did, he sidled up to the ash-pile and crouched down, digging a small hole and shoving it in before covering it up. Even if there was a small chance of the squad heading this way, it was better not to leave any trace of him ever having been there. Standing back up, Naruto looked at the bats as they flew into the night sky, their forms becoming a part of the moonless sky and vanishing into an almost silent predator of the night, known only to the child-thing that could listen to the thrum of their hearts as they flew away.

Naruto smiled and waved at the departing group, glad that they could help him when he was so, so... depressing.

"Thank you!" He called out to them (though not too loudly, for obvious reasons), before turning so the distant voices of the Konoha squad was behind him, and started walking. He would have taken to climbing above and taking to the trees, or running, but given how clear a trail he had inadvertently created with his newly gained and uncontrolled strength by doing just that, walking seemed the better option.

Slow walking.

Slow, boring walking.

Slow, boring, annoying walking.

_Screw walking! I'm running._

Naruto's pace quickened to a jog, which hastened into full-blown running.

_...Until I reach the forest again._

He might have been keen on putting as much distance between the Konoha-nin and himself, but that didn't mean that he wanted to leave another obvious path for them to follow.

Speeding through the canyon, Naruto left little trace or trail to mark his path. The very wind seemed to curl and bend around his form, making him practically fly through the air, barely having to make contact with the canyon walls or ground to continue speeding towards his destination – the Land of Rain. Once he reached the forest, it was at least a day's travel by walk (he thought; geographical study had been one of his worse subjects in the academy along with most of the theoretical study), so he would have to find some place to hide during the -

WHAM!

Extreme speed, Naruto learned, did not equal the instinctive ability to avoid all the things that could trip him up, let alone dodge really obvious obstacles.

Like the tree that now held a rough impression of his head and upper body.

Peeling his body off of the ruined bark, Naruto spat out the mouthful of ash and tree bark that had lodged itself into his mouth, blinking back nonexistent stars from his eyes – eye, Naruto realized, as a piece of bark had lodged itself well within his eye socket.

Reaching his hand up into the blank space where his right eye had been, Naruto felt the giant splinter amidst a sea of ash that had once been his eye. Gripping the splinter tightly, Naruto gave it a small pull to see if it would come out easily, receiving a fair amount of resistance. Groaning (and _not_ thinking about how if the splinter was stuck, it was either in the bone or there was still part of his eye that was intact- _Not. Thinking. About. It!_ ), Naruto curled his fingers around the slim piece of bark that had lodged itself within his eye, and yanked as hard as he could with his arm while the rest of his body was angling itself opposite the momentum his arm would likely generate. The end result was half a piece of bark in the hands of Naruto, whose head had flung backwards into the rocky ground with a hard crack.

Groaning, Naruto sat up, dropping the piece of bark and rubbing the ashes out of his hair as his head injury healed itself. Glancing down at the piece of bark, he just stared with his one eye at the broken splinter that lay on the ground.

"Well, fuck."

Standing (and _not_ thinking that the blow to his head should have left him dazed at best), Naruto dropped down onto his hands and knees, letting as much of the ash from his eye socket fall to the ground before reaching up with one hand into the dead space of vision. Feeling around, he found his eyelid, already reformed, and used his thumb and forefinger to pry it as open as he could get it before slipping the rest of his fingers into the socket. Sliding his fingertips around within the socket ( _don't think about it don't think about it do NOT think about it-_ ) he found the remains of the splinter wedged within a crumbling piece of fleshy... eye. Splaying the tips as much as he could, he found the edges of the remnants of his eye ( _don't think don't think don't think-_ ) and curled his fingers inwards, holding the piece of eyeball. Slowly closing his fingertips together, Naruto found stringy bits of flesh ( _don'tthinkdon'tthinkdon'tthink-_ ) trailing from the back of the eye into his head. Twisting his hand, the fleshy string moved with it, and Naruto once more wished he had the comfort of feeling his heartbeat, and he laughed a little at the thought that, were he alive, his heart would be pounding it's way up his throat. With thoughts of his heart beating once more, Naruto yanked the piece of eye out while twisting his hand, forcing the fleshy strings to break and the ruined eyeball to be forced out of its socket.

As soon as it was free, Naruto could practically feel the empty socket begin to be filled with a fresh eyeball, and within seconds had the strange pleasure of seeing in double- everything to his left was in color, while the field of vision that he had been denied with the loss of his right eye was in black and white, and slowly moving from shades of gray into color in such a fashion that it was almost like the color was bleeding into existence from a black-and-white world.

"Whoa..." Naruto breathed in amazement.

Closing his left eye, Naruto bore witness to the leaves as they changed from gray-black into dark green and lighter still until they settled into the various shades of green that were known of the plants. Opening his left eye once his vision had returned to full color, Naruto got back up onto his feet, and started moving at a faster pace than he had before- not running, though, as he couldn't afford to spend all night removing splinters from his face or barfing up ashes. He found that the speed of his sprint, though, was a little faster than his running speed from when he was alive. Glancing up at the trees, Naruto wished that he had enough control over his newly-gotten strength to have been able to take to them, flying through the air as a much faster speed than on the ground.

This left Naruto in a bit of quandary. He now had vastly increased speed and strength, but he had no way to train in controlling it. He hadn't been this strong before whatever-it-was had happened to him, so it stood to reason that if he were to find a cure for this... death-thing, then this power would vanish.

As much as it was awesome, though, there were drawbacks to having this power of his. The need to consume human blood, for instance, and his inability to stop himself from feeding on anyone with a heartbeat.

Well, that was wrong, wasn't it? He hadn't really been able to stop himself. It was a matter of life or death. Iruka's life, or Naruto's death. The ANBU was dying, all Naruto had done was keep him from suffering. That ANBU and Iruka had died to keep Naruto alive.

Wait.

That was wrong.

Naruto _wasn't_ alive.

The deaths- no, the _murders_ of Iruka and that ANBU were _not_ justified. For years, he had trained in the academy to fight enemy ninja and murderous bandits, not maliciously kill allies! Especially not for such a pointless reason, like that cursed need to consume blood!

He was a murderer. A monster.

He _needed_ to find a cure.

He wanted to become human again. To feel human again.

To _feel_ as humans felt.

And to that point, Naruto continued speeding through the trees, moving towards the Land of Rain, where he would remain in seclusion until he could safely get to the Archives. The Archives would have an answer, a cure.

It had to, because if it didn't...

Naruto didn't want to think about it, about what he would do then.

There had to be a cure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so fun fact: this was meant to go up MONTHS ago, but then my summer got REALLY WILD. It really shouldnt take nearly so long for future chapters to go up.


	7. Claustrophobic

Naruto moved through the brush as swiftly as he could, sprinting (well, it was sprinting to him, whereas to a normal person it would have been running) through the brush. The trees had thinned out considerably some time ago, giving way to a more open setting, large open fields, with small forested areas interposed every couple hundred yards. He wasn't sure where he was in relation to the Land of Rain, but figured he was heading in the right direction (starless sky, indicating heavy clouds, and less forest instead of more, as such a rainy place couldn't possibly have a stable ecosystem).

He hoped that was the case, because if it wasn't that meant he was screwed when dawn came. There was no cover for Naruto to hide in the fields, and even what pitiful cover the trees provided wouldn't be enough to last a few minutes, let alone the entire day.

Up above, the moonless sky was blacker than black, the stars having faded some time ago. All around him, there was silence, nothing to indicate anything alive was nearby. Not even the wind blew, the air still, cold and biting. Naruto was alone, nothing alive anywhere within his expansive earshot. He wrapped his arms around his torso to protect against a chill he could not feel, and may never feel again.

He looked down at himself, at arms darkened with streaks of dirt from the fall down the crevasse, at feet almost indistinguishable from within the almost formless miasma of dirt, mud, guano and tree bark, and wondered what he looked like to another person. His black shirt had been dulled and grayed from the dirt and mud, and his orange pants now were ragged strips of cloth held together by the few threads that hadn't been torn asunder from the trails put upon them. Past the dirt, what little of his skin he could see clearly had become paler, slightly less pink than it had almost four days ago.

_Four days..._

Had it really been such a short time ago? Had it really been a little over three days since Naruto's entire life had changed completely and utterly? Three days ago, he had been a Genin about to take the special test to prove he had what it takes to be a Shinobi of Konohagakure. Three days ago, he had been assigned to a team and given a new Sensei to help him on the road to Hokage. Three days ago, he was worried about buying new milk and fresh groceries. Three days ago...

He had died.

Three days didn't seem like a very long time, but to Naruto, three days was more than enough time to change the world.

Naruto started brushing the dirt off of his body in an attempt to clean himself off. At his feet, a growing pile of the various dirt and fecal matter encircled the place he was standing in, until he was left barefoot (his sandals having been broken down into little more than ragged strings held together by the mud and guano) several feet away. Looking down at himself, he was still clearly dirt-encrusted, but was now noticeably... human.

He looked like a normal human again.

It was a small consolation, Naruto supposed, that he was able to do that – look and act like a human, despite being... something. He had no inkling of what he had become, but he did know that whatever he was, it wasn't human. But... did he even know anything about himself, then, if he wasn't human? He knew he was faster than a human, stronger than a human, and had more acute senses than a human, he could even heal from injury (a feat that humans could not say they could do), but how else did he differ from a human?

And when had he started referring to humans as 'humans', and not 'other people'?

"What's wrong with me?" Naruto asked the empty air, rubbing his arms to protect against the nonexistent chill once more. The warmth the action didn't give him was considerably more unsettling than his line of thought. He released a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding, and shuddered when he began to wonder just when, during the last three days, he had had to be conscious of whether or not he was breathing, and how long it had been since he had last taken a breath of air.

Shivering (something that felt like it was unnatural for him to do), Naruto chose to move his thoughts to safer waters. He backtracked to his previous line of thought, wondering just what he could and couldn't do. Was he really so strong, and so fast?

Steadying himself, Naruto crouched into the starting position, intent on racing from one end of the clearing to the other. He counted off seconds in his head, eyes closed and mouthing the numbers until he got to nine, where he jumped up and pushed off of the ground with the ball of his foot. Unexpectedly, he found himself sailing through the air, his left leg pulled up against his body, waiting to touch down upon the ground and speed him along further. Extending his foot down experimentally, Naruto wasn't prepared for the speed to drive his toes into the dirt and send him slamming into the ground, where he skidded for several feet, digging a furrow into the field. When he finally stopped moving, Naruto lifted his head slightly, letting the pieces of skin that hadn't been torn off by the friction hang loosely before they turned to ash as his skin grew back. He watched with muted revulsion as he felt more than saw the tattered remains of his nose fall to the ground and rebuild itself as it had been before. When the ash stopped falling, he pushed himself up, away from the ground and into a crawl out of the furrow. He looked around, and saw that he was nearly at the end of the clearing opposite where he had started. Naruto focused his eyes down upon the patch of dirt he had kicked off of, spotting a small crater that wasn't there before – an accidental effect from his untested strength.

"Guess this means I gotta train." He grunted (more out of habit than actual pain or effort, as all of his injuries had healed several moments before) as he pushed himself into a standing position. "Again."

Deciding to take on a less painful measure, Naruto darted forward, a blur cutting through the still air, reaching the edge of the clearing. Reaching forward, he wrapped his arms around the trunk of the nearest tree and yanked. There was silence for a moment, before the tree erupted in a screeching chorus of cracks, snaps, and groans. The tree shifted, the bark crushed into dust beneath Naruto's arms as the trunk twisted and snapped, shattering into a mangled husk of the stalwart tree. Lifting the hulking piece of lumber, Naruto carried it to the furrow he had made moments earlier, slamming it down into the ground, planting it as far deep as he could get it. He stepped back, surveying his handiwork.

"So," Naruto started, looking at the replanted tree with interest. "I can rip apart a tree." He almost wished he was winded, or that his heart was beating a hole in his chest. "Awesome!"

He walked over to the treeline several more times, and soon the clearing was covered in replanted trees and Naruto was not even tired. The only thing that could be said to have changed was that his throat had started to itch again. Once he noticed that, though, he had quickly stopped doing anything, instead standing stock-still amidst the motley of transplanted trees. He didn't know very much about it, but he figured it had something to do with the Hunger he had felt, when he had, had... killed Iruka. If it was tied into the amount of activity he did, if it was because he used this newly-gotten strength...

Naruto had no idea what he would do.

If he was capable of doing so, Naruto would find the nearest cave, go deep into it, as deep as possible, and then use as much of his strength as he can to make it collapse around him, trapping him in there.

But he wasn't, so he wouldn't. Even if he was already dead, he didn't want to die permanently. Especially not alone, trapped in a cave for who knows how long. And it was because he knew that he wouldn't just die after a few days trapped that had him so scared to do it. Naruto had no idea how long it would take for him to die. Images came to mind, unbidden, of the woman in white, and how she was literally nothing but skin and bones. It sickened him – would he look just like her when he finally died: leathery skin holding together a body that was little more than a skeleton, struggling to find even the slightest bit of blood – human blood – to keep him alive, with the ever-present thought that this next victim would be the last–

But Naruto couldn't do that. He wanted to remain sane for as long as possible; wanted to remain _him_ for as long as possible. He glanced at the transplanted trees all around him, placing the palm of his hand against the nearest one and staring at it. What would he do, then, if he couldn't eat any human food or even any of the forest animals (that was, if he ever came across any of them)? His gaze shifted to the lightening sky, a purple-red shade almost exactly like that of a bruise, and his thoughts wandered. The only thing that he could eat, it seemed, was blood. Human blood, if the attempt to eat that rat in the bat cave was indicative. Maybe–

His thoughts froze, the stagnant blood in his veins curdling as he realized.

The sky was a purple-red, no longer the deathly black it had been before. Dawn was coming.

Naruto began to panic, his eyes darting to and fro, searching for a nonexistent cave or shelter for him to hide in. But there was nothing; no cave, no house, no miraculous little bolthole he hadn't noticed before. There was no place for him to hide in, a conclusion he reached once more as his mind worked furiously to find a solution.

High above, the purples faded into reds and oranges as the sun neared. He had mere minutes to come up with an idea, but nothing was coming to mind. Naruto's mind kept circling over around what he could see in the clearing: uprooted trees, the nearby patch of forest, the crater his foot had made when he had tried running across the clearing, the furrow he had made when he'd crashed into the ground. There was nothing, absolutely _nothing_ , and he was going to _die_ –

Wait.

The ground was soft. Naruto could dig a hole and hide out in it all day!

But... what about the sunlight? No matter how deep he dug, it would still shine down to the bottom at some point. He could, could...

Naruto could bury himself.

The idea was disturbing, and scared him immeasurably, but compared to his other idea, it was a godsend. It was laughably easy too – he just needed to dig a long, shallow hole and then pack the dirt on top of himself, and stay buried. For about twelve hours. Half a day. Buried.

Those were his choices: buried alive (well, not technically _alive_...) and stay alive or stay aboveground and die. He wanted to live; he wanted to live _so much_.

So Naruto got down on the ground, and pushed his fingers down into the ground, clawing his way down. The sky above gave way to lighter hues of red and the oranges brightened into dark yellows, with the brightness burning Naruto's eyes while his skin crackled and burned. This spurred him into frantically shoveling clumps of dirt out of the hole he was digging. Fingernails were torn off and the skin of his knuckles were flayed, but regrown almost as quickly as they were removed. His movements became faster and more frenzied with each passing second, until he had a small trench, about two feet deep, just as wide, and four and a half feet long. All around it was the dirt that had once been within it and behind Naruto, the rising Sun could nearly be seen. Without a thought, Naruto climbed into the hole and began to use his arms to shovel as much of the dirt to the edge of the hole and onto him, starting with his feet. As the hole filled up and he was covered, all that was left were his arms and head. Reaching up, he grabbed an armful of dirt and piled in on top of himself, laying flat so that it could properly cover him. He didn't need to breath, so there was nothing to worry about as he pulled his left arm up against the rest of his body and finished burying himself with his exposed right arm. Feeling his arm start to burn and break apart into ash, Naruto shoved it into the loose soil around his body and let the dirt naturally cover it and protect him from the deadly Sunlight.

If he could, Naruto would have sighed in relief. He was safe. He lay there, buried just beneath the surface, for an unknown period of time, letting the cold dirt (which he couldn't actually tell if it was cold or not) curl around him like a comforting blanket. Directly above him, the loose soil had grown warm enough that he could kind of feel it, even with all of his deadened senses. And it was here, at the midpoint between the warmth of the surface and the chill of the hidden underground, that Naruto stay.

He wasn't sure why, or even how, but at some point he seemed to have nodded off, and imagined what Konoha would be like when he returned.

It had started off simple enough, with tears of joy from him, a comforting smile from the Sandaime, Konohamaru's eyes shining with barely repressed tears of his own, before becoming darker, more twisted. Sakura, sitting on a bench telling Sasuke how worthless Naruto was, only it wasn't Sasuke sitting there, but Naruto wearing Sasuke's skin. With growing horror, 'Sasuke' fell off of the bench, reaching and pulling at the skin of his face, trying to remove it from him, only for it to stick like glue and stretch as if it were rubber. Iruka appeared before him, his skin deathly pale and clinging to his bones, much like he had when Naruto had killed him. Iruka's mouth rasped, and the words that came out were unintelligible, but Naruto could understand what was being said. _Why_ , he seemed to ask, _Why did you kill me?_

Naruto tried to scream, only to receive silence for his efforts. His hands scrabbled to free himself from within Sasuke's skin, only to find himself back in reality, buried underground.

His hands twitching, the soil around them shifting from the spastic clenching and unclenching, the ground suddenly felt horribly small, the dirt pressing against him from everywhere, like millions upon millions of tiny little hands reaching and grabbing every single part of his body, pervasive in their quest to grip any part of him. Naruto felt violated, like the hands wanted to crush him beneath their grip, and his arms burst out of the ground and reached towards the heavens, as if praying for the aid of a god. Almost immediately, Naruto realized the mistake in his actions, and frantically pulled his arms back in, trying to get the ground to absorb them before they were reduced to ash beneath the gaze of the Sun. With muffled splashes, his arms fell onto the wet ground, and he stilled. His arms weren't screaming in agony from the Sunlight- instead, they were pelted by hard rivulets of water falling from the sky.

_Rain?_

With difficulty, Naruto pulled himself out of the ground as hard and as fast as he could, the mud falling down off of him under its own weight. All around him, rain fell from the sky, which was a dark, murky gray. He crawled along the ground, his eyes glued shut from the mud, only finding his way by shuffling his hands across the muddy ground in front of him. When he touched something solid, Naruto moved towards it, wrapping his arms around one of the uprooted trees as he slowly moved towards standing. Once he was standing, however, he reached a steady hand (not shaking, never again shaking) to dig the mud out of his eyes. What his hand was met with was a heavy, formless layer of mud that could barely be called a face. Digging his fingers into it, he scraped the mud away, flinging it towards the ground until he could feel enough of his face to safely open his eyes.

All around him, everything was gray and wouldn't focus clearly. He left his eyes to readjust to the surface world while digging the rest of his face free. Once he could, Naruto took a deep gasp of air, wishing he could cry tears of joy. Given how much mud had covered his face, Naruto was under no illusions that the rest of his body looked any better. It was with a shaky laugh that he stood upright and moved towards the patchy forest ahead, his laughter continuing for a long time after he left the area.

He had made it into the Land of Rain.


	8. Blood Lust

The Land of Rain was not quite what Naruto expected it to be.

For more than a century, it had been the epicenter of dozens of small wars between Hidden Villages, as well as the primary battlefield for all three of the Great Ninja Wars. It wasn't until the rise of Hanzo the Salamander, and his legendary battle against all of the opposing Shinobi forces that had invaded his country, a battle that had ended with the rise of the Sannin, that the rest of the Elemental Nations started to avoid incursion into the Land of Rain, lest they incite the wrath of one of the most powerful Shinobi to ever exist. Because of this long and bloody history, Naruto had expected there to be signs of such battles, like huge battlefields covered in dozens of different kinds of Kunais and Shurikens from each of the Hidden Villages, or the tattered remains of some poor Chunin's or Jonin's flak jacket – something more than what there actually was.

The Land of Rain was little more than dead land. After 'waking' in that muddy clearing, Naruto had taken to slogging through the land on foot, wanting to enjoy being outside all hours of the day as much as he could. There was little difference between night and day to Naruto's eyes, as no matter how much light managed to illuminate the darkness beneath the sea of rainclouds, it looked the same irregardless of whether the light came from the Sun or the waxing moon. There was little respite to the pouring rain, which came down from the heavens with such force that the mud and dirt was stripped clean of his skin, and he was sure that if it was possible, it would have taken off several layers of skin with it. He had come across several wandering nomads, though neither had seen the other – the nomads had hidden with every single animal in hearing range, and the only way Naruto had known they were there had been because he'd heard the beat of their hearts, the low, thrumming _thump-thump_ that came with their blood flowing through every vein and artery.

He stayed as far as he could from them, and they him.

The land itself seemed dead, a dull gray-brown that seemed to sap the color and life out of everything it came in contact with. What trees he did see growing amongst the muddy rocks were thin, gnarled creations, the trunks twisted with reaching branches full of green-brown leaves that sag and clung when Naruto strayed too close. Were it not for the rocky mesas or dozens of caves, the ground would be impossible to tell apart from the sky.

At one point, Naruto came across the ruins of a massive city, the crumbling remnants of towering buildings that had been cleaved into pieces, or simply crushed into the ground. What remained intact was half-buried beneath a lake of water so thick and heavy it might as well have been a river of mud.

And he saw things. Movement out of the corner of his eye that vanished no matter how fast he moved to see the source. Eventually he gave in, letting the vague forms come and go as they pleased, sometimes just a blur of movement, sometimes squat figures with domed heads, bubble-glass eyes and cylindrical mouths that stared at him through empty, dead eyes. They vanished, of course, the instant he made any sort of motion to try and look directly at them, and it truly set the idea that this was a land of the dead, one that he would have no trouble surviving in until he was able to find a cure.

Eventually the hunger returned, gnawing and clawing at his throat and mouth, and he did his best to ignore the screaming thirst (mostly by staying as far away from the _thump-thump_ of heartbeats as possible) until it ate away at his insides and made everything _hurt_. The moment it started becoming painful to even move, and Naruto was left moving at a speed that could be likened to trying to run in molasses because everything was so _slow_ and there was that gnawing, so cold it _burned_ hungering thirst that didn't so much pulse as spread throughout his entire body, making him feel like he was a soul trapped in a dying body that wouldn't do anything he wanted it to – that was the moment that Naruto crawled into one of the ruined buildings, a half-sphere of what was once a bubble-shaped tower that was raised up into the heavens by its stalk-like foundation, but was now submerged in the mud lake, the wind and rain having worn down the rough exterior until it was slick and smooth and left him sliding down it helplessly as he tried to climb up into one of the windows. In a movement that was far too tiring, Naruto was able to gain enough momentum to run up the smooth surface and gain a handhold on the lowest window ledge. If he was still breathing (which he'd stopped trying to do, as listening to the sound of your own breath, with an awareness of said breathing, in the land of the dead was far to discomforting for him to bear), Naruto was sure that his lungs would be on fire and it would hurt to breathe. Even without breathing, he was still grunting at the exertion of pulling himself up and into the window, where he fell in the pool of water that had accumulated on the floor (which had been a wall, once upon a dream). He contemplated just laying there, but the water he lay in, as well as the rain that continued to come down from the broken window, only made the pain worse.

It took far too long, but eventually Naruto was able to drag himself (quite literally, drag himself, as he couldn't find the strength to do anything more than that through the _tiredness_ and the burning _cold_ that pervaded his body) out of the water and into a not-quite-wet-but-not-quite-dry area of the building, and lay there, letting the burning cold turn into a dull numbness as his vision began to fade.

_Is... this what it's like to... die?_

* * *

 

"Hey! Wake up!" The feeling of someone gripping him by the shoulders and shaking him hard brought him back to awareness, and he raised his arms to shield his eyes from the light to see–

Wait.

The light.

Light.

Sunlight.

_Sunlight!_

Naruto started screaming and curled up into the tightest ball he could form, covering as much skin as he could with his clothes in an attempt to shield himself from the light that... wasn't burning him. He halted in his movements, just laying there as he felt the warmth of the sun on him. Tentatively, he uncurled out of the ball, entire body tense and ready to return to the position if need be.

"Have an interesting dream?" In his stupor, Naruto just looked at the silver-haired man ( _Hatake Kakashi_ , his mind whispered), and began to wonder just whether it had really been a dream. "It certainly must have been interesting, you were moving about quite a bit."

"Yeah..." Naruto breathed (actually breathed! He was _breathing_!), still in shock. "Interesting."

There was a snort from behind, and Naruto turned to see–

Time stopped, and Naruto's brain faltered before restarting, because what he was seeing just _could not_ be real.

"I can't believe you fell asleep during prayer." The Naruto lookalike said, shaking his head disdainfully. "What kinda warrior are you?"

_Thump-thump._

"Yeah!" Naruto twisted his neck to look at Sakura, and shuddered as a chill crawled along his spine like a spider, twitchy, always-in-motion legs skittering up and down his spine. "It's disrespectful to do such things before an alter of our lord god."

_Thump-thump._

"Now, now, Sakura." Naruto could practically _feel_ his skin crawl at the sound of Kakashi's voice. It was like the hissing of dozens of snakes made into words. "It's not Sasuke's fault he fell asleep. He must have stayed up late last night and snuck into the sermon. We can't blame him for being so devout."

 _Sasuke?_ And it was for the first time that Naruto really looked at himself, noticing the white sleeves that went from his wrists up to the edges of his elbows on his forearms, the indigo tee-shirt with a large, wide collar covering pale skin that looked like that of a person that needed to spend more time in the sun–

Naruto screamed, scrambling backwards on his hands and feet, as if moving away from the spot he had lain on the ground would make him stop looking like Sasuke. The not-Naruto crossed his arms and rolled his eyes at Naruto's plight from his position on a nearby pedestal, while Sakura and Kakashi just sighed, a low, hissing sound that served to make Naruto's skin crawl. And Naruto's screams became high-pitched strangled noises as he watched his skin literally writhe, squirming and rippling like thousands of worms were crawling over and around one another just beneath the surface. Without a word, he stabbed the fingers of his right hand into his left arm, feeling no pain as he tore into the skin and tasting bile as the skin fell away to reveal a mass of writhing white snakes with glowing yellow eyes. The albino snakes slithered out from the tear in the skin, moving to circle him.

_Thump-thump._

"You shouldn't have done that." Naruto's head snapped to watch as Kakashi and Sakura fell to the ground, every part of their body writhing just like his arms had, and from their mouths slithered hundreds of the little white serpents, their yellow eyes glowing as the empty skins of Kakashi and Sakura deflated until there was nothing left within either. The snakes joined the ones that had come from him, all of them were hissing angrily and moving ever closer.

_Thump-thump._

"Really now, child." The not-Naruto spoke up from his position on the pedestal, and this time Naruto was drawn to the sickly yellow eyes the not-Naruto had that were glowing just the same as the thousands of serpents circling the teen. "You are the last of my acolytes. The least you could do is bow before your god."

_Thump-thump._

When Naruto did nothing, the serpents struck, their fangs ripping and tearing into Naruto's fake skin, ripping it to shreds as his real skin was made bare, leaving him laying on the ground as the serpents twisted and curled over his skin, their scales glistening with an opaque red goo that had been between Naruto's real skin and his Sasuke-skin. He lay on his hands and knees, his arms shaking as he looked at the _thing_ that sat upon the pedestal.

_Thump-thump._

"Much better." It smirked, a tiny curling of the lips that gave Naruto the impression that it wanted to do something much, much different to Naruto.

_Thump-thump._

"What..." He gasped out, shivering at the sensation of the serpents slithering all over his body. "Are you?"

The _thing_ smiled, and looked at Naruto in amusement.

_Thump-thump._

"Your god."

* * *

 

The very first sensation Naruto became aware of, and was working to be the only sensation he could feel, was that everything _hurt_. Everything from the tips of his fingers and toes to his bones felt like they were they were being burned frozen. He didn't even try to move because _everything_ hurt and it felt like he was being frozen with such intensity that he wondered if it were possible for there to exist flames that froze and that there must because it felt like he was laying in the center of a bonfire made of these freezing flames–

"He's awake!" A gravelly voice spoke from above, and Naruto almost considered opening his eyes to see who it was, except it was painful enough existing and he didn't want to add the agony of a headache because he opened his eyes when he really shouldn't have. Rough, calloused fingers slid around his arms, lightly gripping him and gently shook him. "Stay with us, boy! The Shinigami will not take your soul tonight!"

The statement, made with such conviction, made Naruto breath in and start laughing. The idea that he could be dying, that his soul was still in his body to be taken by death, was so hilarious that it wasn't even funny. He was already dead, and had no idea if he even had a soul.

There was a light splashing sound next to his head, and Naruto didn't move as a soaked cloth was placed on his forehead, and he could almost imagine the feel of the heat coming off it.

"Don't listen to him, child." The coarse voice of an older woman spoke up from the Naruto's right, and he could practically _see_ the woman lightly slap the man, her husband most likely, as she continued. "You just need rest and some food. How you survived out in the Deadlands without food for so long I'll never know!"

 _Food?_ Now that the elderly woman mentioned it, he was _starving_ , although he could only distantly hear two _thump-thumps_ , the burning chill had enveloped his ears, making the heartbeats sound as far-off as the quiet footfalls of a Shinobi.

"Deadlands?" The word sounded dry, the sounds cutting into his dry throat. The calloused hands pulled away, although one pat him on the shoulder, giving it a light squeeze.

"Aye, the Deadlands." The man said solemnly. "But we ought not speak of things that don't need spoken."

"Indeed." His wife agreed, and there was a clink as metal hit metal. "Can you tell us your name, child?"

"Uzu–" Was all Naruto could get out before he started coughing, taking wheezing gasps for a breath of air that just wouldn't come to him. Without warning, a metal something was pressed against his lips, pouring hot liquid ash into his mouth that was surprisingly more satisfying to his quenched throat than he thought it would be, although it did nothing for his debilitating _hunger_. With his throat's soreness deadened, Naruto tried again. "Uzumaki Naruto."

"Uzumaki?" The man mused, a faint scratching sound made it's way to Naruto's ears as the man hummed in thought. "Now that's a name I've not heard in far too long. Tell me, Naruto, what were your parents' names?"

"Don't know." Naruto rasped as numbness began to set in again, giving him merciful relief once more. "Orphan since birth."

"Poor lad." The woman said, and Naruto could feel his hair being patted down by something, and assumed that the woman had taken to patting his head. "Do you think you can open your eyes for us? Give a little more color than this dirt-blond hair of yours to look at?"

Naruto didn't see anything wrong with that, as he could barely move and hadn't made any sort of motion to, to... attack this nice elderly couple that had taken him in. He cracked his eyelids open, letting a sliver of light reach his eyes, and when he didn't immediately shut them as tight as he could, he slowly opened them wider, taking in the room he was in as well as getting a clear view of the elderly couple that had rescued him.

The first thing he thought was that these people were clearly some kid's grandparents, as they had that kind look on their faces that Naruto remembered seeing on some of the more elderly people that took his old academy classmates home, a wizened knowledge gleaming in their eyes and a general world-weary appearance in how they looked and moved bending down to hug their grandchildren and greet them with smiles and promises of treats as soon as they returned home.

"Old." His voice sounded far too rough to be normal, and he was barely conscious of what he was saying. "You're so old."

Naruto expected them to be angry; to coldly tell him that he was being rude or berate him, like everyone always did. Never in his wildest dreams would he expect them to laugh – not even the Sandaime laughed when Naruto called him on his age.

But the man laughed while the woman sighed.

"Even this boy agrees, Aiko, and we've never seen him before." The man chortled, while the woman – Aiko, it seemed, was her name – harrumphed.

"Perhaps for you, Ichiro, but _I_ am still in my prime." The now-named Ichiro just kept laughing. Naruto watched their interaction with nothing less than confusion on his face, and it must have shown through his pained features, as the couple's antics died down and they looked at him worriedly.

"Why..." Naruto tried to speak, but his throat constricted around the words, sending him into a painful coughing fit. Without a word, Ichiro moved to steady Naruto's head, holding it up while Aiko held a saucer filled with an opaque green liquid to his lips, gently tipping it so that the thick liquid could flow into his mouth, where he reflexively swallowed it. Although it tasted like ash, the liquid helped make his throat feel less dry, and relax it enough that he could talk without feeling too much pain from the action. "Why did you save me?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, Naruto knew it was the wrong thing to ask. Both Ichiro and Aiko looked saddened, and he just _knew_ he had brought up bad memories for them.

"Sorry." He apologized, and fell into the habit of breathing regularly. "I just..."

"It's not your fault." Aiko told him. "You aren't the first to go into the Deadlands to end your suffering, and you certainly won't be the last."

"And you look like our child used to." Ichiro continued. "Don't sound much like him, or act like him, but I'd recognize that hair anywhere."

Naruto froze, not even pretending to breathe at that statement. He'd been called many things in his life (menace and annoyance were among the kinder insults), but never had he reminded someone of another person. It gave him a sense of belonging; that he was an actual person with his own thoughts and ideas and deserved to be known as such. That he really had been part of a family.

"Now don't get the boy's hopes up!" Aiko exclaimed, and Naruto watched as she hit Ichiro over the shoulder. "You say that about every child we come across, I'm beginning to think you can't remember what he looked like!"

"I remember what he looked like just as well as I remember what you used to look like." Ichiro argued, and was hit in the shoulder once more, while Naruto was wondering if this was what it was like, having a family.

 _Thump-thump_.

The sound was so sudden, so unexpected, that Naruto nearly leapt a foot in the air in surprise. The full-body spasm caught the attention of the elderly couple, who rushed to Naruto's aid once more.

 _Thump-thump_. _Thump-thump._

They were like a love song, a serenade that called out to him on a level that made his aches moan, and caused the pain to fade away to tolerable levels. The sound alone made his skin tingle and a spark of elation drag its way along his spine before settling in the pit of his stomach. The _hunger_ called to Naruto, begging him to be appeased with the lifeblood of these two people. He worriedly ran a dry tongue across canines that were quickly becoming elongated, feeling the medicine lose its edge as his throat dried up and _screamed_ to be given relief.

"Run." He rasped, feeling the scratching of his throat at the action, but ignoring it all the same. "Away from me. Keep running, don't look back."

"That's the fever talking boy." Ichiro scolded him, holding his head still with wrinkled, weathered hands that pulsed with life that sang to Naruto. "We're not leaving you."

 _Thump-thump_.

"Cursed." Naruto managed to get out, clamping his jaws shut, baring the fangs to the elderly couple. "I'm cursed. I'll kill you if you stay. Run."

That gave Ichiro pause, and Naruto shut his eyes from the strain as the old man looked to his wife.

 _Thump-thump_.

"Cursed, you say?" Aiko said from Naruto's left, her voice dubious. "Not one of those mystic Shinobi curses, right?"

"No." Naruto grunted, nails digging gauges into the table he lay upon. He cracked open his eyes in time to see the elderly couple share a look.

 _Thump-thump_.

"We'll take you to Lord Pein." Ichiro nodded, and Naruto found it painful to remain still. "This curse you have shall be removed by his divine will."

That was a bad idea, Naruto thought, since it meant that this very nice elderly couple (and they _were_ indeed very nice, since they treated the blond like he was an actual human being, even though he wasn't anymore) would stay by his side, teasing him with a burning instinctual need he could never act on. They were far too nice a couple to him, and Naruto didn't want to have to kill them.

If he could never return to Konoha after being cured, then at least he could spend the rest of his days here, with Ichiro and Aiko.

 _Thump-thump_.

"No!" He protested, feeling his throat nearly give way at the sound. "You... don't understand. I, I don't..."

"I understand just fine." Aiko interrupted him, packing a pair of bags. "Amegakure isn't too far off from here, and I'm sure that we'll be able to procure voyage to it from Idaishiro."

She didn't – they didn't understand. They _couldn't_ understand. No one could.

 _Thump-thump_.

"Don't." He _needed_ them to understand. This wasn't something he could stop, however much he wanted. "Please."

"Nonsense." Ichiro declared, and his face came into sharp detail as Naruto's every muscle tensed, ready to spring into action. "We'll reach Idaishiro within the hour, and with luck, Lord Pein will answer our prayers and remove this curse by day's end."

 _Thump-thump_.

"Please." Naruto pleaded, a final attempt to save them. He was losing control, if he ever had it to begin with. "Run."

 _Thump-thump_.

...and he was lost.

Aiko was the first to go down. A pair of hands, wrinkled and weathered, gripped him by the shoulders, trying to pull Naruto away from a long-overdue meal, but Naruto flung the irritant away. He dragged his fangs along the neck of his meal, feeling the thready pulsing against them before biting down, drawing his real intended target to the surface. He couldn't stop the moan that bubbled up from within as the first drops touched his tongue, sparking every taste bud into life as a deluge of the delicious liquid flowed into his mouth, caressing his screaming throat with molten silk as it settled briefly into his stomach before exploding into every inch of his body with a cacophony of sensation. With each mouthful of food, the hunger faded, its painful claws removing their hold upon his limbs. The cold fire was soon washed away, replaced with a different kind of fire – one that was warm and bubbling from the pit of his stomach that made his eyes roll in the back of his head as it flared to encompass his body in a pure feeling of _alive_ that assaulted every one of his senses. Nerves tickled; taste buds swooned; all he could smell was cinnamon and vanilla; all he could hear was the rapid _thud-thud-thud_ from his meal as he ate it; he saw stars with each flare of the bubbling fire in his stomach.

Naruto _loved_ it, savoring in the feelings each sense brought him.

All too soon, though, it was over, and Naruto was watching as the empty husk fell to the floor, breaking apart on impact before crumbling to ash. He whined, unhappy that it was over so soon. He wanted – no, he _needed_ more.

 _Thump-thump_.

Naruto froze. Listening to the world around him, hearing the dull pitter-patter of rain, the–

 _Thump-thump_.

There it was again! Naruto's head whipped around, bringing him face-to-face with Ichiro, who was splayed against the wall of the room amidst broken shelving, silverware and the remains of an end table. The elderly man was looking at Naruto in fear and horror as the teen approached.

"Why..." Ichiro coughed, his eyes moving from Naruto to the crumbling husk of Aiko and back to Naruto. "You... truly are..." He coughed, and blood pooled along his lips, several drops sliding down to his chin. "Cursed."

_Cursed..._

The words brought a measure of sentience back into Naruto's mind, and he paused in his advance towards his prey – no. Towards Ichiro, the kindly old man who had said that Naruto's hair had reminded the man of his own lost child.

He had just killed Aiko, drank her blood like it was an elixir of life, and was about to do the same to Ichiro.

This wasn't what Naruto wanted. He hadn't wanted to kill Aiko, and he didn't want to kill Ichiro.

But... he was still hungry, and _needed_ to feed; to fulfill that instinctive _need_ that the whole of his body was screaming for, to achieve that sensual high once more...

 _Thump-thump_.

He moved forward, crouching down to get a better hold on Ichiro as he bit down.

Naruto now fully understood what everyone else saw in him. He truly was a monster in human form.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so this chapter hints at a couple headcanons I have, such as: Minato was a war orphan found at the end of the Second War. Konoha (and most of the Hidden Villages) get new blood in their ranks by taking in children who have their chakra activated from being so close to warzones. Another headcanon is that the shinobi are REALLY RARE, since the ability to USE chakra isn't exactly common. If a shinobi wasn't from a clan, then they were found during the war and taken in. Ninja wars affect landscapes, saturating the area in chakra, and some of the supposed orphans taken in by the villages are actually lost kids that're taken in before they can find their families. Those kids had their chakra boosted from being in such close proximity to the warzones.
> 
> And yeah, Naruto just met and killed his grandparents. Not that he knows that little fact.


	9. Spectre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Naruto makes some friends

Naruto stared off into the distance, watching the far-off lights of the port city of Idaishiro with a kind of somber resignation mixed with intense determination. His vision was unimpeded despite the rain, allowing him to watch as Shinobi and civilian alike boarded the ferryboat bound for Amegakure. He didn't know how, exactly, the foreign Hidden Village worked, but he figured that a number of those civilians were making some sort of pilgrimage to pray at the shrine of this Lord Pein.

The very same shrine Naruto was going to pray to.

He knew it was far too long a shot to even consider pursuing over the Archives, but it had been the last wish of Ichiro and Aiko, and Naruto wanted to go through with their idea before doing anything else. If this Lord Pein removed the curse, then Naruto would return to their house, clean it up, and live the rest of his life there, safe and peacefully as he imagined a life that almost was.

After... after, Naruto had carefully dug through Aiko and Ichiro's belongings, and found a photograph of a younger couple, and a small child with wild blond hair and striking blue eyes (that looked maddeningly familiar), with the names of the three written on the back: Namikaze Ichiro, Aiko, and Minato. He stared at the names for several minutes, hoping that the boy's name would trigger some kind of recognition, but it didn't.

Naruto had left the picture on the table he had been laid upon, shutting the door after finding a domed helmet that he could wear to deaden the sound of the heartbeats of the people anywhere nearby. The helmet, once he put it on, had doused his head in such a thick layer of dust and dirt that he wouldn't be surprised if his own yellow hair had been stained a sad shade of orange-brown. The helmet itself was waterproofed, as the opening fiercely clung to the skin of his neck and wouldn't give way no matter how he twisted and turned. He gazed down at the ferry through the giant, insect-like glass eyes on the front of the helmet one last time, listening to the thundering whoosh of the rain on the helmet, before letting gravity pull him into free-fall, giving Naruto a sense of weightlessness in the seconds before he made contact with the massive ocean-like lake.

_Ka-swoosh!_

For the longest time, all Naruto could see were the torrent of bubbles as the water of the titanic lake settled around him, before the black depths overtook the vision outside of the helmet. He remained there, underwater, just watching the inky blackness as it surrounded and encapsulated him, a different sort of weightlessness pressing itself upon his body, both pulling him down while pushing him up. He lazily drifted for what felt like an eternity before movement in the black caught his attention. Long, thin forms slithered in and out of vision, living shadows that became bigger and bigger with each subsequent appearance until Naruto was left scrambling in the water, using nonexistent swimming skills to attempt to back away from the sharp teeth of the massive eels that surrounded him. He pushed with all his might towards the gray, rippling light that indicated the surface, only for the weightlessness to forsake him as his right leg was caught in the grip of an eel.

He _felt_ more than heard the snaps that indicated the bones in his leg breaking as it bent sideways, but there was no mistaking the _whump-crack_ of slamming into the slick hide of the eel as he was dragged away. The eel kept close to the surface, Naruto knew, since every once in a while the eye-holes showed the surface of the lake, before diving down again.

More out of irritation than anything else, Naruto blindly lashed out at the eel, an open-handed jab with as much force as he could put into it. In the microsecond before he made contact, it almost felt like there was a whirlwind surrounding his skin – but then his jab made contact, and he dully felt the skin break on the eel, as well as the bone beneath it shattering, and the muted squelch as his hand became lodged in deep in the eel's brain. The eel bucked, smacking Naruto against its head – and his arm deeper into the brain – before going limp, floating forward from the remnants of its forward momentum before slowly starting to sink, pulling Naruto, arm still embedded in the creature's brain, with it.

Once he started to feel gravity's dull pull on him, Naruto pulled his mangled leg from the now-slack mouth, ignoring the feel of his broken leg in favor of yanking his arm free from the mutilated brain and kicking away from the sinking body with his uninjured leg. A plume of dark reddish-black liquid followed him briefly, before the currents dispersed it, spreading it every-which-way.

Naruto twisted in the water, the distinct lack of any kind of landmark telling him which way was _down_ and which was _up_ – because everywhere was the same dull black, except if he squinted _really_ hard in that one direction it kinda, sorta looked less dull of a black than the other directions. Taking a chance, Naruto steeled his resolve, and kicked his legs, trying his best to move in an element he hadn't really been taught to survive in. The attempt had less than stellar results, and Naruto was left twisting in place, but he was moving at the very least.

"Okay," he began, speaking for the first time in days. His voice sounded almost alien, a mishmash of sounds that he instinctively knew was his native language, but with a breathlessness that came from not having to breathe. "This time, I'll try for _coordination_."

The concept was simple – wave arms, kick legs, pray to deities for success – and soon, he was moving through the water, away from the sinking dead eel. All around him, shapes moved in the murky darkness, aquatic creatures darting towards the carcass. Something long, thin, distressingly _large_ and with _many_ tail-arms screamed past the blond, sending Naruto flying through the water. The many-limbed creature seemed to be some sort of dinner bell, and soon the water was swirling and thrashing with dozens of creatures unlike any Naruto had ever seen before, all of them fighting for a piece of the dead eel before the others ate it all up. It was almost fortunate that the darkness made it hard to see exact details, but Naruto thought he saw massive beaks hidden within the centers of the creatures with tail-arms, and equally massive fish (with mouths so large and so full of teeth that Naruto could barely believe that they existed) that only stood out as vague forms against the black abyss.

With a surge of strength, he pushed upwards, towards the less-dark water, leaving the massacre to continue in the dark water. After a time, Naruto looked back, only to see more of the consuming black; there was no way to tell from which direction he'd come from. With any luck, he would reach the surface soon, and then...

Naruto would head to Amegakure.

* * *

Konan looked out over the edge of the balcony, listening to the soothing _swoosh_ of the rain as she rested. Despite the lifetime of familiarity she had with this village, Konan often spent her free time, rare that it was, looking out over the city, imagining that she was gazing upon it for the first time. It rarely worked, as she was as intimately knowledgeable about every little crook and cranny as the thousands of papers she could become, but sometimes, on the rarest of rare days, she noticed little details about the village that she'd forgotten: a pork dumpling stall run by an elderly woman; a shrine hung on a street corner in honor of her, the Lady Angel; the faint smell of saltwater carried on the wind and buried beneath the oily, smoky smell of industry; the smiles of the children playing in the back-alleys. Little things, but important reminders of why she had done all this.

"There is an anomaly in the rain." The blue-haired woman turned, the Akatsuki cloak resting heavily on her shoulders. Brown eyes met gray, and she continued to marvel at how the ringed Rinnegan looked so much like ripples in the water, with his pupils laying at the epicenter like raindrops.

"An anomaly?" Clearly it wasn't any remaining of Hanzo's loyal, or Pein would have said as much. Likewise if it were an intruder or enemy Shinobi. Boats and the like were also recognized; an anomaly... was something completely unknown.

"A void." Still there was confusion, this time tinging Pein's voice. "A nonentity. Someone that should be there but..." a tilt of the head, and then, "isn't."

"How large is this void?" Konan knew they couldn't fully understand just who or what it was due to the sheer lack of information, but at least Pein could tell give approximations of size and number. "And are there any more of it?"

"Just the one." A pause, and the head tilted again, this time towards the falling rain. "the void is small, large enough to hold a child. Fresh Genin age, by its dimensions."

A scout? Or...

"It could be one of the dead." Konan moved to join the orange-haired individual. "We both know too well what lies to the East. This would not be the first time a dead body washed up on our shores."

"It isn't dead." Pein's tone was final. "Whatever it is, it's moving against the current. It is alive."

"Where?" Konan was prepared to scout out whatever it was. If it was too much for her, then she would call on Pein to deal with it.

"East. Three hundred meters south-southeast of pier twenty-three and closing." Konan stepped out onto the balcony, lines forming across her entire body. "I will lose sight of it once the rain stops."

Pale hands clapped together, and as they were pointed towards the heavens the rainfall slowed, until all that was left in the air was the low-hanging clouds that were fed by the exhaust chimneys belching steam and smoke high into the atmosphere, and the taste of wetness from the sea the village was built upon. All around Pein there was suddenly a torrent of sound as thousands of sheets of paper flew into the air, folding into thousands of origami butterflies as they flew through the sky towards their target.

While all this happened a single paper airplane settled down at his feet; an unspoken message of intent, that she might have to call upon his aid.

* * *

His first thought towards Amegakure was _big_ ; his second thought was _are those buildings made of pipes?_ ; _Is there even an island under all this?_ , his third.

All in all, Naruto was stunned with just how... _industrial_ Amegakure looked. He'd imagined that it would be some sort of jungle island filled with temple ruins where the ninjas lived in, filled with ancient traps and...

Right. Focus on the task at hand: finding the shrine to this Lord Pein.

Naruto started swimming, letting the air in his helmet be the main buoyancy keeping the preteen above the surface. The rain came coming down felt almost oppressive, and all too soon it started to feel like he wasn't moving at all. The towers of Amegakure loomed in the near distance, but their size never seemed to increase. Something wasn't right.

Naruto stopped swimming, instead floating in place, feeling the now-still ocean water around him, and frowned. That wasn't right; the entire time he'd been in the water, there was always _something_ in motion, from the currents to the waves to the rippling wakes as ginormous sea creatures scurried about deep down, beyond the reach of the dull light of the sky. For it to be so unnaturally still meant...

_Oh no..._

Shinobi. It had to be.

Naruto's head twisted this way and that, trying to pinpoint where they were. The helmet, however, wasn't making it very easy to see around him, and the blond was reaching out to unclasp the domed top when the _sea itself_ parted before him, having become not a sea of water, but of paper. Hundreds of sheets came flying out of the wall of paper towards him, and Naruto shrieked as he was mummified in paper.

"Are you an enemy of Amegakure?" The voice should have been muffled, but it felt like the feminine voice was coming from the paper itself. When Naruto gave no immediate answer, the wrappings tightened, and the blond supposed that were he capable of it, the paper would have been suffocating him, squeezing every last bit of air from his lungs. "Are you an enemy of Amegakure?"

"I've come..." Pause. Inhale. "...to see Lord Pein." Even if he didn't need to breathe, having the paper pressing against his lungs was making it hard to talk. "Been cursed... need help. Please..."

There was silence, the seconds building in the entrapped world he was in, until...

"What are you?" And that was the question, wasn't it? What was he?

"Died. Didn't stay dead." Because he really, truly was a monster. He killed _everyone_ , ate their blood. "Became... monster. Sun burns. Only eat blood. No... heartbeat. Please help me."

The silence that followed was agonizing, and Naruto desperately hoped that both the woman would help direct him to this Lord Pein, and that she ran away, left him before he attacked and stole away her life like he did–

"Very well." There was a ruffling noise, and Naruto became faintly aware of the papers coating the helmet being removed, and the bubble-eyes of the helmet were freed, allowing him a glimpse at a blue-haired, brown-eyed woman gazing intently at the tinted glass of the helmet. There was a click and a hiss, and Naruto's face was besieged with chill air that smelled sharp and curled around his head. It almost felt like the wind was forming a hand that was ruffling his hair, running its' fingers through each individual strand fondly. There was a gasp from the woman. "Yahiko?"

* * *

 

Those blue eyes. That rounded face, always smeared with dirt. That hair, an orange-brown that looked like a mud-soaked blond. It couldn't be. He'd _died_. She'd _seen_ it, they both had. Was he.. was it...

No. The only god there was, was Pein.

But that didn't stop that little niggling bit of her, that wondered if maybe–

"Where is it?" She was snapped out of her musings to find that the boy was looking at her oddly. Her surprise must have been evident, as he elaborated. "Your heartbeat. I can't hear it." Blue eyes flickered to her lack of a body, only a head and arm attached at the shoulder. "What _are_ you?"

"The Lady Angel." Until there was confirmation, it was prudent to play it safe. This child was blind to Pein's sensory jutsu, and even now she wasn't feeling any sort of chakra from the boy. She alone couldn't assess whether or not this child was dangerous to bring into Ame. "You have not answered my question. What are you?"

The question, oddly enough, elicited more of a reaction out of the boy than encasing him in her paper had. There's a grimace, and a look of intense regret and terror and confusion; the look of a child that has lost everything, and seen that loss firsthand. Konan knew that look too well, because she remembered wearing it as a child, and again as an adult.

"Not human," was his response, when he finally spoke, and Konan realized that this boy did not sound at all like Yahiko used to. "Not anymore."

"And you are... cursed?" Phrased like a question, it was more of a statement of fact. The boy, still cocooned within her paper (save his head, as that would defeat the purpose), believed it as fact. And she was coming to the same conclusion. Normally, a person cocooned as tightly as he was hard-pressed to be able to _breathe_ , let alone speak as clearly as he could. If she didn't know any better, Konan would've thought that he wasn't even...

_Oh._

This... if what was going on was true, then this was beyond her knowledge. Beyond perhaps even Pein's knowledge.

"Are... we gonna go see the shrine to this Lord Pein?" The boy's tone was hesitant, and he was gazing almost fearfully at the village. Which was strange, as it was supposed to be _her_ that was fearful of letting the boy anywhere closer to her village than he already was.

"He is already here." And that was no lie, for her lone paper airplane was flying through the air towards here, followed closely by Chikushodo – the Summoner. The only flaw the Rinnegan held was their lack of peripheral vision. Indeed, before Pein had split into multiple selves, his omnipotence was severely limited. But now, with all the Summons and the six Paths? There was nothing beyond his reach that he could not grasp.

In surprise, the boy's head turned to view the arrival. Blue eyes met gray, and Pein's hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of the boy's hair. He did not cry out in pain so much as wince as Pein's hands roughly dug into his hair, and flakes of dirt began to fall from it, revealing bright blond hair hidden beneath a layer of mud.

"Not him," murmured Pein, before addressing the boy. "Boy. What is your name?"

"I, uh, I'm not sure if it's _me_ right now but..." The boy hesitated, before muttering out, "Uzumaki Naruto."

"Naruto?" Konan glanced at Pein from the corner of her eye. There was some significance to the boy's name that she was missing. "Why do you seek me?"

"There was an old couple, out in the, they called it the Deadlands. They were so nice, and talked about how you can help me, and I..."

"You killed them." A statement, not a question.

"I... _ate_ them," the newly-named Naruto admitted, refusing to look at either of them. "I... eat blood now. Human blood. It keeps me... existing."

"You mean alive," Konan corrected him.

"I mean existing." This was followed up with a half-hearted glare that died out as soon as he looked at them. "I... died. And I don't mean the storybook kind of death where the guy feels dead inside; I am dead. I don't need to breathe, don't react to emotions, don't... don't have a heartbeat anymore." There was a pause where he blinked before finally looking at Pein. "And... you don't either. She's kinda got one, but it's real quiet-like and hard to find, but you... you don't have anything."

"You can hear my heartbeat?" This boy, he wasn't human. He looked human, talked human, _acted_ human, but he wasn't. He might have been human before, but he wasn't now.

Naruto nodded. "Yeah, I can. I can hear everyone's heartbeat. It's... like a drumbeat sorta. Like a buncha people went running and all you can hear is the stomping of their feet on the ground. It's so loud, because underneath it all you can hear all the little things, like distant animals moving, breathing, talking."

 _Talking?_ The feeling of unease did not dwindle away this time, and Konan doubted that she would be feeling at ease with the world around her anytime soon.

"And I don't sleep. Or, can't sleep, actually. Well, it's more like... hallucinations. Visions." His eyes fall completely dead, and Konan unconsciously tightens the paper encasing the boy, but he doesn't react. No sharp gasp, not even a cringe to show he noticed. "White serpents with glowing yellow eyes."

"Orochimaru..." Pein breathed, and they both understood. This boy was one of the snake Summoner's experiments. The monster had always been obsessed with obtaining eternity in the name of immortality, and whatever had been done to this child was something he may have to live with for the rest of his life.

"Who?" And with that one word, understanding was lost once more. "It wore my skin, commanded me to bow before it. My god..."

The tone was almost reverent, but what unsettled Konan the most was that the boy, Naruto, didn't appear to notice that he'd said it with such inflection.

"Konan." Her attention went back to Pein, who was gazing at the boy intensely. It was more than just saying her name; there was weight with it, a command that she understood. Papers fluttered in the air as they moved to fully encase Naruto. "We will take you into the city, to our quarters. There I shall pass judgment upon you."

"No!" Papers tore as Naruto moved, shaking his head and crossing his arms in front of his head as he fell backwards into the sea. On instinct, Pein's hand shot out, grabbing hold of the boy's neck and squeezing hard, and Konan knew that he had crushed the trachea; neither of them had expected the boy to have such strength, as it was unprecedented for someone to break or tear Konan's papers with such ease.

"Ow." The word came out as a dry, breathless rasp, and Naruto gazed at the two of them with confusion, annoyance, and just the slightest bits of betrayal. " _Don't_."

"You _will_ comply, or I shall pass judgment here and now." It wasn't a threat, Konan knew. She'd seen him do it far too often to know Pein's words as anything other than absolute truth. Naruto had gone limp in Pein's grasp, and it was only the spark in his eyes that told Konan that the boy wasn't completely dead.

"Do it." Pein blinked impassively as Konan gaped. Naruto's hands came back up, fingers curling around Pein's arm, and met the man's gaze with his own. "Kill me. I would rather die again than be forced to kill anyone else because of this."

It was only years of battle experience that allowed Konan to spot the black rod before it went into Naruto's abdomen, tearing through the back of his shirt, in the space between his heart and spine. The boy took a raspy breath, looking at the rod stuck through him. "You missed the heart."

"This is a special rod which allows me to control bodies such as the one you see before you. As you are, you can only move as I will it. I will not allow the residents of this land to be put in undue danger. Their pain is enough." Pein dropped Naruto onto the surface of the water, where the wind swirled at his feet where they stood atop the water's surface. While Naruto gawked, Pein walked towards the village, Naruto following with jerky movement. "Stop resisting. That rod channels my chakra into your body, allowing me to control your every movement. With that in you, you are no threat to anyone in my village."

"H-how?" Naruto looked like he couldn't believe it, and Konan took pity on the boy.

"Pein is a god. There is nothing beyond his grasp. Even death is... impermanent in the wake of his power." Hope rose in the boy's expression, and Konan watched it grow impassively. It was a hope that she had long since forgotten herself.

"So– so he can bring me back to life? I can..." And then, just as quick as it appeared, the hopeful expression fell. "No, I can't. I... what is there for me to go back to? They'd kill me, or lock me up if I'm lucky."

It's that lone statement that has Konan realizing that they still did not know very much at all about this boy. And because of it, she can't help but ask him, "Where do you hail from?"

"Huh?" He blinked before the words register in his mind. "Oh! Uh... Konoha?"

They froze, and nobody dared even breathe. Naruto was confused, and it dawns on Konan that he's unaware of what he's just told them. The blond was young, likely still in training to graduate Konoha's academy, or perhaps so new a Genin that he had no idea about how to react in a foreign land, in the presence of foreign Shinobi.

Pein had two rods in his grasp now, and both found their home buried deep in the teen, before two more were applied, and then another two after that. When it was clear that the boy had no hope of moving without Pein's express permission, his hair was fisted into Pein's grasp, and pulled close so blue eyes met gray Rinnegan. "You hail from Konoha? Did they send you after us, to make a statement of sorts?"

"I – what?" The boy started panicking, but was incapable of moving. Konan watched it all go down as the wind picked up around them, becoming more and more frenzied the more panicked the boy got, until... " _No_!"

A cyclone formed around Naruto, with himself and Pein at the center, while Konan was left combating her way through the angry, cutting wind to try and get back to her partner's side. Most curious about the cyclone, however, was that it was purely wind, with not a drop of water to be found despite it's location over the sea; a true cyclone, not yet large enough to become a tornado, and it was full of wind sharp enough to keep Konan away as she's forced to stay back.

"Pein!" She can barely hear her _own_ voice over all the wind, so there are no doubts that not even he could hear her. Worse still, she can't even _see_ him. "Pein!"

It shouldn't worry her so much, because all that is trapped in there is one of the Paths, but it did. Even if it wasn't Yahiko's body in there, she still felt that small piece of uncertainty.

* * *

Despite the raging whirlwind around the two of them, it was completely calm where Pein stood, fingers curled tightly around the boy's neck. A sword was in his other hand, pressed against the base of the boy's neck, just below his grip.

"What are you, boy?" The child was a void, even now. Intrinsically, Pein could see the boy as he was, but in all other aspects... no chakra, no mental energy, not even physical energy. It made no sense; not even dead bodies were so devoid of such energies. The decomposed were no different, still harboring lingering traces of the energies once held in life. But the boy, he was a black hole, a dark entity that didn't exude energy so much as consume it. It was like a hunger, one that was more all-consuming of the energies around it than...

He slammed his palm, flat against the boy's stomach, and watched as the Sealing scripture for Summoning appeared, quickly replaced by an explosion of smoke as the Consumer, Gakido. Like Chikushodo, it too had orange-brown hair, and the gray-ringed eyes of the Rinnegan.

"What was that?!" The boy's eyes were wide as Pein felt him struggle to move against the rods. "Who is he?"

"Struggling is pointless. As I have said, you cannot move." It didn't matter which Path spoke, only that the boy heard what he said. Gakido reached out, hand curling out around the boy's neck, fingers slipping between those of Chikushodo's. "I am Pein; the body you are more familiar with is but one of many. Each have their own purpose; the one I have Summoned is one of two that will define whether or not I should kill you or allow you passage into my village."

Beneath Gakido's grip, Naruto's throat bobbed as he dry swallowed, and Pein drew upon the Consumer's power. Several moments passed, and nothing happened. Naruto did not display any change in behavior, nor was there any showing of loss of either chakra or energy. Instead, the boy's eyes rolled upwards until only the whites of his eyes were left, and with a shriek, he began clawing at the arm holding onto him. Fingernails were sharpening into claws while flat, herbivorous teeth gave way to sharp canines. The void became a black hole, and the roles were reversed – where only seconds before Gakido was the one drawing energies from the boy, it then became that Naruto was leeching energies from the Path.

Pein formed a Hand Seal, exerting his control through the rod impaled within the boy's body; at once he stopped, although for several minutes more he struggled to bite into Gakido, trying to leech the Path's energies. The method was imperfect, but the leeching was centered mainly around Naruto's mouth; combined with the growth of the canines, it made the boy appear... vampiric in nature.

_Ah! So that's it..._

"Fascinating child..." The whirlwind died down as the clawing slowed. The eyes slid back down to normal, the claws retracted, along with the fangs, and soon the boy was limp in Gakido's grip. The two of them stared at each other – blue eyes filled with fear, while gray Rinnegan held nothing but curiosity.

"What am I?" The broken whisper carried in the wind even as Konan rushed towards them in a flurry of paper. " _Can you help me_?"

Pein stared at the boy – no, not a boy; not anymore. The creature before him was as much a boy as it was human. It– _he_ was something that was supposed to be little more than a scary bedtime story, something told to the children of this land to ensure they remained safe against the dark of the world. A story so old that its' origins can be found in only one place in all the Elemental Nations – the Archives.

"You... are a vampire." Chikushodo turned to Konan, splitting Pein's vision on both people before him. "And we require the Archives."

Konan nodded sharply; she knew what that meant. Naruto, however, looked lost as Pein turned towards the village. "The Archives? But that means–"

"They hold information on not just this boy, but concerning our goals." Chikushodo took hold of Naruto as Gakido vanished in a plume of smoke, the Summons ended. "The Akatsuki are going to war."


	10. Mortuarty

Amegakure was originally conceived as a water treatment plant. Using the most advanced technology of the time, the plant would take the saltwater sea and convert it into freshwater. It would then import the freshwater into the mountains to the East, and to the desert to the South, supplying locations that wouldn't normally be able to thrive otherwise.

When the Hidden Villages were established, Sunagakure sought to claim the treatment plant for the Land of Wind, finding opposition in the Lands of Earth and Fire. Konoha had attempted a peace treaty, only to negotiations to fail, resulting in the deaths of the Shodaime Hokage, Tsuchikage, and Kazekage. Their deaths would mark the first of what would eventually be called the Deadlands, and ensure the Land of Rain's location as the centerpiece of three world wars. The events of the First Great Shinobi World War would result in the death of the daughter of the Land of Rain's Daimyo, the first Jinchuuriki of the Gobi, and incite the Daimyo to allow samurai into the treatment plant to form Amegakure. The samurai had left the Land of Iron to become Shinobi, and it was their skills in battle that ensured that the newly named Amegakure would remain free of invasion by any of the other Hidden Villages.

"But this was not to be, for despite our village flourishing within, beyond the sea the Deadlands grew larger. With every skirmish between nations, more and more of the Land of Rain became impoverished. We were a starving people. We still are." Pein paused in his talk, glancing back at the bound Naruto. The blond's eyes were glazed, sightless toward the city around them, in spite of the sheets of paper covering him. Konan was only giving the speech half her attention, instead her focus was on the various paper angels, scouting the fastest route back to their tower. "This village remains, and shall always remain, the greatest pride of the Land of Rain."

"Why..." The word came slowly, like the boy was forcing himself to pay attention to a single drop of water in the middle of a waterfall. More words followed, just as slowly. "Are you... telling me... this?"

Pein watched at the boy's reaction, and noted that his gaze immediately zeroed in on nearby congregations of people, no matter how fast the trio moved past. The southern tower peaked high into the sky, dwarfing all others with its' immensity. It grew larger and larger the closer they got, and his body could feel the possession strengthening, the rods growing ever warmer. "I tell you because now you shall learn of the Land of Rain's greatest shame. The Archives."

"The... Archives?" The lag in Naruto's voice decreased the closer they got as well, and Pein could see the chakra filling the body increasing in strength. Already the boy looked almost alive, almost normal. "The Archives of Iwa?"

"Before, they were the Archives of Ame. It was during a border war in the first war that the Land of Rain lost land, recompense for the Gobi Jinchuuriki's actions."

"But the first Jinchuuriki of the Gobi was the daughter of the Tsuchikage." Naruto sounded confused, and Pein wondered what history the victors taught themselves.

"History is written by the victors, painting themselves in acts of kindness and superiority. The ravages of land we now call Gobi's Pass were once fertile farmland belonging to the Land of Fire. The Daimyo's daughter was the true first Jinchuuriki of the Gobi, and her Seal failed. It was the early days of Jinchuuriki, and few knew or understood the Seals that could and could not be used. The daughter went on a rampage, tearing through the Land of Rain to the east, entering the Land of Fire. The rampage had revealed an ambush battalion that Iwa had hoped to march directly into Konoha. Unfortunately for them, the Nidaime Hokage was in the area at the time, and the battle happened much as your history tells of it. Konoha blamed Iwa, and Iwa blamed Ame. Amegakure was in its infancy at the time, and so had little to pay Iwa but for the Gobi, which Konoha had wrongly assumed had fallen into the hands of the Land of Earth, and the Archives." He paused, watching to make sure Naruto understood. When the boy nodded, still confused, Pein continued. "The Archives now sit outside the Land of Rain's border, guarded by the Jinchuuriki of the Gobi. It is the Land of Rain's greatest insult, and greatest shame."

They entered the tower, their steps echoing in the halls. Giant pipes lined the walls, occasionally making deep thrumming noises that vibrated the air, the pipes themselves shuddering as water moved through them. The noise itself was thick in the air, dimming out the pounding thrum of the heartbeats that Naruto was hearing. Pein watching as the boy's attention slowly became more and more focused. He looked at Pein, his vision becoming more and more clear the deeper into the building they moved.

"This is..." He struggled to find the right words. "Everything got quiet."

Pein inclined his head, impassive. "It was already quiet."

At that, Naruto looked offended. "No it wasn't. I could hear _everything_. The heartbeats drowned out the rain."

 _Interesting..._ So the boy had indeed been tracking the people. Pein wondered how acute Naruto's hearing was, and how far away from a target the boy had to be to stop hearing them.

"But you still heard everything." It wasn't a question, but the boy still nodded.

"Everything you said, yeah." Naruto's lip curled down, a half-frown of annoyance. "But I still don't get it."

"You are young, and from a prosperous nation. It is not expected of you to fully understand." Pein continued walking, and after a moment, Naruto started moving again. Beside the bound preteen, papers whirled and spun, connecting together to take the shape of Konan. She kept pace beside Naruto, even as her feet materialized and touched the ground.

"No, I understood most of what you were saying." They came across a pair of doors, metal and pressed snugly against each other. Pein reached out, grabbing both handles and pulling. With a groan of metal, the doors swung open, scraping grooves along the floor. There was a hiss and a whoosh of air sucking into the darkened room. "What I didn't get was, you said Akatsuki was going to war. Is that... aren't you Amegakure?"

Konan glanced at Naruto in surprise, not realizing that the boy was that observant. Pein inclined his head to the side, considering his next response as he walked into the room. Immediately, fluorescent lights buzzed to life, shining brightly over everything. The far wall of the massive room was covered in large metal drawers, two feet tall by three feet wide. Tables sat at regular intervals all throughout the room, spotlights hanging over each of them. To one side, a computer lay, the massive processors buzzing in idle anticipation, while a long row of medical equipment lay on a table beside them. With a single gesture, Naruto was laid down atop one of the tables, and Konan stood over the boy while Pein moved toward the medical equipment. Behind them, the doors closed with a hiss of air and a groan of metal.

Naruto watched with mild fear as Konan outstretched her arm, fingers splaying as lines appeared all over her hand, splitting apart into dozens of sheets of paper. They floated in the air above him, twisting and folding, shifting in size and shape until... "Is that – is that a skeleton?"

"Your skeleton, yes." Konan glanced down at the preteen. "We need an understanding of your bone structure in order to properly place the piercings."

"Piercings?!" Naruto tried to move, only to have his body disobey him, the rod stabbed into him growing warmer. "What– no!"

"If you desire our aid, then you must have these piercings." Pein returned to the table with a large bottle of peroxide and a jar of cotton balls. "They will allow me control over your body. Should you act in any way against either us or the citizens of this village, then I will halt your movements."

"They'll... You'll stop me?" Naruto focused on Pein, glancing between him and Konan dubiously. "I won't attack anyone else?"

"None that I deem under my protection." Pein's eyes glanced between the paper skeleton and Naruto. He stepped back toward the instruments, bringing a small wheeled table back to where Naruto was laying. "It also prevents you from wandering too far away from this location."

Naruto watched as Pein picked up a pair of scissors, one blade fat and rounded while the other was thin and sharp. The scissors were brought down on the ruined pants, the rounded end sliding harmlessly over Naruto's skin as the fabric of one leg was cut through. "What are you doing?!"

Konan reached over, pushing Naruto's head back against the table. "We are removing these clothes from you. The piercings cannot happen if we do not have an accurate understanding of your body type."

"But– but I'll be _naked_! In front of a–a–" He inhaled, hissed at the shifting of the rod still impaled in him, but resigned to Konan's grip as the helmet was removed from his shoulders.

"I assure you, anything on your body will not astonish me." She patted him on the head as Pein finished cutting open the one pant leg, moving to cut open the other side. "We will remove your clothes and then wash you clean of any particulates. The piercings themselves may also hurt, although they have not been given to any person living."

"You may also be assured that no autopsy will be performed." Pein didn't glance away from the scissors, finishing the outside line of the other leg, moving to cut along the inseam of the pants.

"Autopsy?" Naruto's gaze shifted from Pein to Konan. "Is it too late to back out?"

"Yes." In a single swipe, the inseam of one pant leg was cut open, and Pein's wrist twisted as the scissors moved along the space between the legs.

"Oh." Naruto quailed, before focusing his attention on Pein. "Um, it might not matter much if you did anyway. I... kinda regrew an eye. And the entire lower half of my body? I dunno, that part was really weird."

Pein paused as he reached the other pant leg, turning to meet Naruto's gaze. Perhaps the boy was not a vampire, but something else. Something different. "How do you heal?"

"I don't kn–" Naruto was cut off as Konan grabbed at the rod, fingers curling around it in a steadfast grip. She yanked, a wet splurch hanging in the air as the rod was forcibly removed. With the other hand, Konan tore the shirt off, exposing a torso with faint marks on the abdomen, almost like a faded tan, and a ragged hole just above the naval. Through the torn skin and muscles, Pein could see the hints of the spine, it was so deep. There was no blood, no bleeding, and almost immediately the wound began to hiss, ash building up and falling away as muscles and veins rebuilt themselves, as entire organs started regrowing the lost tissue, as skin regrew and came together, hiding the healing from view. Pein matched gazes with Konan, the both of them having confirmed that this was not like the Edo Tensei– the ash that healed those undead were of a different sort, the stories told. "Awww, it closed up. Dam– hurk."

Naruto convulsed, rolling to the side as he choked on something. His head lolled against the edge of the table, mouth open and throat visibly closing in on itself. Both Akatsuki members grabbed at the boy, steadying him and watching in fascination as a trail of ash spilled out of Naruto's mouth, falling onto the table. It continued for several more seconds, until the flow stopped and Naruto went still. Reaching out, Pein pinched at the ash, his other hand grabbing at the ash that had fallen away from where it had piled up on the torso. Konan voiced his thoughts, her voice thick. "He regurgitates the ash from internal injuries. Like a cat will cough up a hairball."

"It will complicate things." Pein's gaze trailed back to the faint lines, a finger tracing them. They were familiar, and nagged at the back of his mind. Konoha. The strange markings on his face, like whiskers. And now this... "Konan."

She responded, pushing the boy onto his back to shine the light against the now bare stomach. She stared, taking over in tracing the markings as Pein cut away the shirt. On the table, Naruto squirmed, feeling uncomfortably bare in front of these strange people. A single finger went alight with chakra, touching down against the tanned marks.

Naruto shrieked, feeling something entirely _foreign_ and _wrong_ entering his body, and Pein stabbed him again, this time just above the heart, and the boy stilled. On his torso, the tanned marks sizzled, blackening into a spiral shape surrounded by smaller marks, and Konan stilled. Pein watched with one hand gripping the rod piercing Naruto as the Seal – and that's what it was, a Seal that was made by a divine being to hold something of near equal divinity– "Jinchuuriki."

"Wha–" Naruto gurgled, trying not to jostle the rod that was so near to his heart, so close to causing–

"We have Konoha's Jinchuuriki." Pein's gaze flickered to meet Konan's, then settled on the black lines burned onto the boy's abdomen. "But this is empty. It holds nothing, not anymore."

"Death by extraction?" Konan murmured to herself, before dismissing the possibility. "No, there would be signs of it. This Seal is unbroken."

"The contract is completed." Pein understood that part, the more he stared at the Seal. "A soul collected upon the bearer's death."

"M-mine?" Naruto cut into the conversation, his eyes wide with fear.

Konan shook her head. "It is unclear. The scripture..."

Pein nodded. "It mentions only the collection of the sealed soul, nothing more." He turned to Naruto, gripping the rod once more. The boy flinched, his gaze flickering between Pein and the rod. "You are a Jinchuuriki. You lied to us."

"I didn't lie!" Naruto kept his eyes locked on the rod. "I don't know what a Jinchuuriki is! If I'm one I don't– just don't, don't hurt my heart! Anything, anything else. Just not the heart."

Konan watched as Pein's grip shifted on the rod, and Naruto gasped as the rod was pulled out. The rod slid up his sleeve, vanishing within the folds of the cloak. Pein stepped away, leaving the room. "I need to consult with him about our plans. Clean the boy, then store him. The piercings will have to wait."

The door closed with a hiss of air and the groans of metal. Naruto and Konan were left in silence, before she gently set Naruto back against the table, one hand pulling out a hose from beneath the table. "Do you genuinely not know what a Jinchuuriki is?"

Naruto shook his head, even as the wound closed up. Seconds later he started heaving again, curling over the side of the table as a trail of ash fell from his mouth. Konan watched it happen with mild interest, pushing the teen back onto his back, a penlight flicking on as she put down the hose and gripped Naruto's jaw. She shifted, her foot clicking on the microphone. "No indication of a pouch or vent from which the ash comes from, suggesting that internal injuries circulate the ash into the digestive system for expulsion. I will study the body for any cause of death, Nagato, but do not expect anything out of it." The microphone clicked off, and she set the penlight down. Naruto stared at her in confusion.

"Who's Nagato?"

Konan ignored the question, instead picking up the hose again. "Lie still. Your body must be cleansed of all particulates before storage."

Naruto glared, but stayed still, even as the hose turned on. "You didn't answer me."

"A Jinchuuriki is one who holds a Biju." Konan paused, looking at Naruto appraisingly. "Do I have to explain what a Biju is?"

"...Kyuubi?" Naruto avoided her gaze, instead watching the water cascading out of the hose with apprehension.

"Among others." She went back to washing his legs, the water beating the skin raw as mud sloughed off of it to wash down the drain. "So. Kyuubi then."

Naruto flinched, but her voice held no accusations. "So?"

"All in time." The legs were quickly cleaned off before Konan realized that she'd forgotten to remove the teen's boxers. Shutting off the water, she picked the scissors up again while Naruto curled in on himself.

"No!" He started at the sight of the scissors, arms moving to protect the boxers. "I don't– you can't–"

"I can and I am." She flicked her arm, papers splitting off to force the teen to lay back again. "There is nothing that will happen that I have not seen before. Do you think I will feel shamed at seeing your naked body?"

"I'll feel shamed." Naruto grumbled to himself, holding his position even as the papers curled around his arms and legs.

"Shame is passing. Curses are not." More papers flew out, covering more of Naruto's arms. "Comply or be burned. Fire is one way to destroy a vampire, is it not?"

"I wouldn't know." Naruto finally conceded, letting himself get forced back into laying flat. "Sun hurts like hell, though. Burned half my scalp off before I realized what was happening."

Konan hummed at that statement, cutting away the boxers. Unsurprisingly, there was little dirt and grime there, but protocol was absolute. Naruto made a keening noise, threatening to curl up again, but his flaccid penis didn't so much as twitch as Konan turned the hose back on again. "It appears any fears you had were unfounded."

"What?" Naruto lifted his head, watching the water sift through the sparse blond hairs and wash away what little dirt had accumulated there. "What."

"If you were expecting an erection, rest assured the dead do rarely rise. Lack of blood circulation, you see. The fresher bodies may be erect, but as the circulation stops and the body's blood starts to pool, it quickly ends." Konan finished washing that area, moving up toward the navel. "You were in the early stages of puberty, from the hair growth. I doubt you'll miss it that much, at any rate."

"So I can't– not even–" Naruto's face contorted, trying to put to words what Konan already surmised.

"Not until a cure can be found, I wouldn't think." A hand reached out to gently shut Naruto's mouth. "Now let's refrain from such crass talk. Even the divine have standards."

Naruto remained quiet, but only until she had finished cleaning his torso, and has moved to his arms. "What's Akatsuki? Is that was people from Amegakure call their villa– mmph!"

The silence that followed was glorious to Konan's ears. She bent back down to finish cleaning the teen even as he glared at her, the paper curled over his mouth and jaw keeping him silent. The only sound int the room was the shifting of the air as the ventilation system worked on cooling the room. It was better that he was silent, as she'd found the entire conversation unusual for what she was doing.

The dead had never spoken back to her.

She finished cleaning him, switching the hose off and replacing it back in its holster. Picking up a comb from the tray, she followed up with the process of clearing the hair of any particulates or contaminates. Dirt and mud scraped away from the scalp, further revealing the teen's blond hair, and as soon as it was started she was done. There was no need to perform a full autopsy here, nor would any attempts to cut the teen open be fruitful. The papers peeled off of Naruto's mouth, and he licked his lips, moving his mouth to stretch the muscles. "That was just plain mean."

"I work best in silence." Konan scanned the wall of lockers, picking out one that would best hold the teen. "And it is better that you get used to it. We will need time to prepare for the piercings, and–"

"And you don't trust me to walk around the village." Naruto's voice was clipped, one far too cold and detached despite having never been in a war, Konan realized. "I don't blame you – _I_ don't trust me anymore." A sharp inhale, followed by a sigh. "So where are you keeping me?"

Konan pointed, her arm unfurling into sheets of paper that whirled and encased Naruto's body even as her lower body fell apart into paper, white wings forming on her back. She floated up and toward one of the lockers, a lone one in the upper right corner that had rarely seen use. The door opened and a table slid out. "Here is the best place, far from anyone else. I am the only one who enters this room."

"What about–" Naruto glanced from the dark space to Konan as he was lowered into it. "I'll need to breathe."

"No, you won't." She shook her head, the papers returning to her as the table slid back into place. "You are a vampire. Breathing is one of the things you will never need to do again."

The door clicked shut.

* * *

"The situation has changed."

Madara paused, leaning back into his chair as Tendo, Pein's preferred body, settled into his own. Ringed gray eyes set the masked man with a hard stare, which was matched with lazy interest. "Is that so?"

"The Kyuubi Jinchuuriki is dead." Pein steepled his fingers, watching Madara's reaction closely.

Madara, for his part, merely hummed. "Zetsu's reports indicate that he has merely vanished. Although several Konoha Shinobi have been reported as found dead, dated as having gone missing the same time as the boy."

"Zetsu's reports are correct." Pein inclined his head. "Konan is in the mortuary performing the autopsy on the body."

Madara shifted forward in his seat, the red Sharingan eye glinting through the darkness beneath his mask. "Is that so? And how does a body missing from Konoha end up here?"

"As I said, the situation has changed." Pein's hands fell away, gesturing to the map of the Elemental Nations at their feet. "We will need to orchestrate an attack on the Archives ahead of schedule."

"We speed up the plan?" Here Madara held a vested interest, wanting to push peace slowly onto the rest of the world, in a manner that would not draw attention to Akatsuki – and ultimately, himself – until it was too late. "Procure the Gobi? Is that the wisest move?"

"The Gobi will be a secondary goal." Pein fixed his full attention on Madara. "The Kyuubi Jinchuuriki is a vampire."

The Sharingan eye narrowed. "You are not known to joke."

"Nor is this a joking matter." Konan stepped into the room, taking her own seat across from Madara. "The boy exists in a state of undeath, speaking of yellow-eyed serpent gods."

Madara snarled. "Orochimaru."

"We thought so as well, but the boy has never heard of that beast." Pein tilted his head. "Unless, of course, Zetsu's reports of both him and the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki are incorrect. They have never once crossed paths."

"Vampires do not exist." Madara swept his hands out, gesturing to the map. "A myth, nothing more."

"And yet a child with no heartbeat, no chakra, no need to breathe, lays in our morgue below." Konan straightened in her seat. "Pein possesses the Rinnegan, a god's power. Do not speak of impossibility."

Madara canted his head, the orange lines dotting his mask – so very much like fire consuming him, Konan thought – falling into shadow. "A serpent god, you said?"

"Yes." Konan glanced at Pein. "Do you know what the boy speaks of?"

"No." Madara shifted. "But perhaps it is best that we find out. Two teams must go."

"One to procure the information." Konan nodded. "And the other?"

"To procure Gobi." Pein gestured at Madara. "If we are to keep our plans secret from this supposed god, then a suitable distraction will be needed."

"The boy may want to go along with the team." Konan considered who to send. "Kakuzu is the most prudent to send into the Archives, if not Sasori."

"Sasori shall not be sent. His partner is far too rash, likely to destroy the very information we seek." Pein nodded. "But Deidara may yet prove useful as the one to hunt the Gobi."

"We may split up teams for this instance. Sasori and Kakuzu together would prove the best at locating and procuring the necessary information." Madara glanced at Konan. "Deidara will need to be tempered, and Kakuzu's partner is an ill fit."

"Kisame then." Konan avoided Madara's red stare. "Hidan will go with Itachi as they determine the Nanabi's location."

"And why not pair Itachi with Deidara?" Madara leaned forward, curious to hear her answer.

"They are a dangerous duo, but even more so against each other. Itachi is still needed, and Deidara will use the battle as an opportunity to attempt to kill him." Konan shifted her stare at Pein. "Of course, it is your decision that will ultimately decide who will be deployed together."

Pein held still, considering the deployment. "They will have to temporarily rescind all ties to Akatsuki for this. Our plans are young, and implicating our organization in this needless act of war is detrimental. But this deployment... Kisame and Deidara. Sasori and Kakuzu. Hidan and Itachi. Sound partnerships all."

"But temporary." Madara turned his head, returning his gaze at Pein. "Those pairings will not work in the long term."

"Indeed." Pein canted his head, matching Madara's gaze. "Hidan is still new to this organization, and Itachi can provide a more accurate breakdown of how he works than Kakuzu would, their current partnership notwithstanding."

"Then we are in agreement." Konan didn't react as a paper airplane flew into the room, unfolding to wrap around and reabsorb into her neck. After a pause, she leaned forward, hands against her knees to stand. "I am needed elsewhere. Let us adjourn this meeting and begin preparations."

Pein stood as well, a slow nod following the motion, while Madara sat back, giving a sharp nod of his own. Konan left the room with a click of the door. Pein turned to stare at Madara, who seemed almost lazy in the turn of his head. "I will conduct my own studies in parallel. Orochimaru's studies may yet prove useful. Zetsu of course should accompany me, should you require my counsel."

Madara continued to sit, even as the air warped and pulled him away, his ocular space-time jutsu activating. Seconds later, the chair sat empty, leaving Pein alone in his thoughts.

* * *

 

He never thought that silence could be so loud.

There was a noise in his ears, a keening pitch that buzzed the loudest in the silence, drowning out even the loudest of his thoughts.

Naruto hadn't realized that the cold of the chamber he lay in would be the least of his worries. At first, it had been the lack of airflow, and he'd almost considered breaking the door open until he remembered that he didn't need to breathe. So he'd stopped, and let the air sit against him in the dark and silence, to be replaced by the incessant keening.

He tapped his fingers on everything, his nails clacking out tuneless melodies – lullabies he thought he knew once, songs that he'd made up to fill the silence before – until he found himself tapping out a single beat, long and steady and soothing in a way that made his chest feel strange. He counted the beats – _thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump_.

A heartbeat, he eventually realized. It didn't seem like his own, one he only knew after a long day of studying and training, a pounding drum beat that seemed to bang against his entire chest. No, this one was slower, weaker, reminding him of–

Something. He didn't know what. Impressions came to him, of _large_ and _warm_ and _safe_. That last one confused him the most.

Naruto couldn't remember a time when he'd ever felt such a certainty of safety.

There were impressions of colors too. Red, mostly, but he wasn't sure if that was entirely correct. Everything about the colors seemed so muted and vague, like he was trying to see something with his eyes closed.

He felt bittersweet, like he should be crying.

The beat continued, lulling him into... something. Not sleep. A dream-like state. He remembered, relived. When he was young and loud and angry and empty. When he was older, and lonely. Dark nights of rain that were filled with his own voice. Days spent in the academy, watching everyone interact with each other. Days spent alone. Dark days and bright days and all sorts of weather.

The beat stopped.

Naruto squirmed, trying to shift onto his side, trying to hug his knees to make it all go away.

The silence was still too loud.

"I exist." He spoke to fill the silence, to silence the silence (and wasn't that a strange thought, that silence would need silencing). It was also to fill a void that had begun to make itself known, a lack of... something, he didn't know what, but that needed to be reclaimed. "I may not be Uzumaki Naruto. I might be a vampire. I am twelve years old. I love miso ramen. I hate vegetables. I like red bean soup. I had a Sensei, a team. I had a dream." He paused, then amended. "I _have_ a dream. To be human. Because the me I am right now..."

The silence returned, loud and pressing.

"I am a monster. But that is what I am. It..." He struggled around the complexities of the concept. "It isn't _who_ I am. They aren't the same, I guess. And who I am... might be Uzumaki Naruto. It might not. I dunno, but I _feel_ like I'm Uzumaki Naruto. And.. is that enough?"

The silence was stopped, a faint click and groan of metal, followed by footsteps. Someone was back in the morgue. He strained to hear through the door, but whoever it was... the heartbeat was faint. Was it the woman– Konan? Was she back to give him the piercings? Was it time for him to leave the drawer?

The seconds passed by, then minutes, all marked by the keening silence in his ears, ringing through his head. Doors clicked open, then closed. Further away, then closer. Naruto sucked in a breath, holding it in anticipation. It could have just been removal of bodies for cremation, or–

His door opened.

Light shone through, air hissing out as the table he laid on slid out. A masked person gazed down at him from the ceiling, wearing the same cloak as Pein and Konan. Their mask was almost entirely black, with orange stripes reaching across it like flames. A single hole for a single eye stared down at him, and Naruto squinted at the strangeness of the person's eye – although it was not quite as strange as Pein's eyes were, red and glowing in the shadows beyond the mask.

"So it is true." The person spoke, a masculine voice bland of emotion. "Uzumaki Naruto has indeed died."

"Who are you?" There were a million and more questions Naruto wanted to ask, but that sat at the top of the mountain.

The masked man shrugged, a strange gesture as his cloak bundled up against him even more. "Who I am is irrelevant at this time. But answer me this: where were you in Konoha, the moment you died?"

Naruto tried to remember, the memories slipping through his hands like water. "Southwest quadrant, five blocks down from the academy. I was shopping at a twenty-four hour store after training in the academy grounds. Why is this important? Does Pein need to know what happened?"

"Thank you. Our paths will cross again." The masked figure inclined his head in what might have been a nod, but Naruto missed it. The table slid back into the drawer, the door slamming shut in his face, leaving him back in with the silence and darkness.

"No!" He punched the door, denting the metal, but it wouldn't open. He punched again, and again, warping the door entirely as he was left alone with his thoughts. "Who are you?! What did you need that for?!" Again and again he punched, but still the door remained. "Let me out! Let me out!"

Naruto's knuckles tore open, healed, and tore again. His throat started to become dry, the thirst making itself known again as his screams echoed in the chamber. The air felt heavy, pressing against him and making everything feel smaller, so much smaller. He felt like he was shrinking, getting pushed down against himself, and he hit harder. The air started moving with his panic, focusing on his fist as he continued to pound against the door. The indentation of his knuckles got more and more defined, warping the door until the frame started to warp. Air hissed as the seal was broken, and little columns of light started to shine through the seams.

He exhaled, collapsing against the ruined door and letting the air flow against him, around him. He had a connection with the wind again, one that he hadn't realized he'd needed until it had filled the void. Naruto stared at the beams of light, watching as he twisted his fingers, the air moving and spinning to follow them in tiny bursts of wind. He smiled, tiny but with the smallest hint of fang.

This... this was new. This was good.


	11. Necrotic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Naruto begins to settle into place, and the world continues to turn.

Konan led the two genin into the morgue, setting the body bag onto the prep table. She nodded, and they left. The doors slid shut, and Konan turned to look at the locker door containing Naruto. It was dented outward, heavily misshapen.

"Naruto?" she called out, uncertain. Zetsu had been sent to retrieve known information on Uzumaki Naruto, and had come up with a very thin file. Born October tenth to Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina, both died shortly thereafter (Kushina from the strain of having Kyuubi Unsealed, and Minato from the Seal used to contain the Biju within his son). Naruto was a ward of Konoha, lived on his own in the provided orphan barracks. Joined the academy at six years old, took the graduation exam three times, failed twice. Was assigned to Jonin Hatake Kakashi along with Itachi's younger brother as a teammate. Never showed for his confirmation exam taught by Hatake. The evening before the exam was meant to happen, Umino Iruka was reported missing, and one of the border ANBU reported spotting Naruto before engaging. A body, drained of blood and matching Umino's description, was found two blocks from Naruto's apartment the following morning. Tracking teams were deployed after the border ANBU didn't report in, and they picked up the scent trail of Naruto, following as far as Gobi's Pass. There, they'd lost the trail, and Naruto was listed as MIA.

Konoha was keeping this quiet, trying to regain their Jinchuuriki without letting it known that he'd gone rogue.

Pale fingers slipped out from the warped door, and Konan thought she saw a blue eye glowing in the darkness. "They gone?"

"Yes." Konan went to work, cutting away the clothes of the body. She's old hand at it all, treating the dead. It was a lot easier than treating the living. More intimate, perhaps, but easier. Her hand fell apart in a flutter of paper, reforming in the air beside the warped door. It opened with a groaning squeak before falling apart from the wall. Naruto pulled himself out of the locker, falling to the floor much slower and much softer than Konan expected. He looked calmer, more at ease with himself than Konan liked. She was reminded of their own members, all of them immortal, and allowed herself a smile. "You've gotten some self-control."

"Nah." He waved her off, walking over to the body on the slab. "They smell like death. I think I don't like that."

Naruto eyed the corpse with a wrinkled nose. Konan sighed, stabbing the tube into the corpse's neck. "I suppose this means we can't feed you with the blood of the bodies that come in?"

Naruto made a disgusted noise, and blinked in surprise when he realized what he'd done. He looked down at himself in surprise, then yelped when he saw that he was still naked. "Where are my clothes?!"

"I brought a new set with me," Konan said, her torso parting in a flutter of papers to reveal a bound package. "And an offer. "

Naruto took the package, eyeing Konan and the package suspiciously. He unwrapped it, letting the plain brown clothes fall to the floor. Making a displeased noise, Naruto picked up the pants and slipped them on. "What kind of offer?"

"Our organization, Akatsuki," Konan began, "is always seeking new members. We only seek the most powerful of Shinobi, and those who have specific abilities, uniquely suited to our tastes."

Naruto stared. "Does this have to do with why you don't have a heartbeat?"

Konan nodded. She inserted another needle, attached to a different tube, and turned the switch. With a hiss, blood began to be sucked into one tube, while another replaced it with a yellowed liquid. "Immortality has many faces," she began, "and the members of Akatsuki all have it in their own ways."

Naruto squinted, still suspicious, but nodded along. "So what would I do if I joined?"

"As you are now? Nothing," Konan replied. She gestured to the other table, where an assortment of items usually reserved for Pein's paths lay. "But our goal is the capture of each of the tailed beasts. You once held one yourself."

"Kyuubi," Naruto breathed, slipping the shirt over his shoulders. Konan reached out, stopping him from putting on the shirt.

"The ninth tail," she said. "And there are eight others before it. Come sit."

Naruto lowered the shirt off of his head, staring at her distrustfully, but still complied. She gently took his chin in her hands, trailing her fingers along the jawline. She would have to put the piercings there, and on his lips. A few on his arms and shoulders, as well. Konan picked up the first of the piercings, a needle gun with enough power in it to create a hole even in the toughest of bone. "I will need to apply piercings to you, to allow you to freely move outside of this room. It will have to be quick, given your rate of regeneration, and it _will_ hurt."

Naruto shrugged. "Is this like the rod Pein stabbed me with?" He rubbed his chest, near his heart. "Because that really hurt."

Konan offered him a polite smile, and said, "These piercings are made of the same substance. As long as you remain within Pein's domain, they will help you in your control."

Naruto nodded along, thoughtful. "I can control the wind."

Konan thought back to the whirlwind that had been created when he first met them. "Naturally."

She pressed the gun to his jaw, close to the right ear, and pulled the trigger. It thumped in her hand, and Naruto yelped, falling away. He rubbed at his jaw, where the hole was slowly closing up. Konan pulled out a rod, picking Naruto up by the scruff of his scalp, and shoved the rod into place. The wound healed up around it, the skin buckling at first as it tried to close around the intrusion, before stopping. "What the hell?!"

"I did warn you," Konan said, guiding him into laying on the table. "I will need to do the same to several other places on your body."

"Not near the heart, right?" Naruto asked, nervous.

Konan nodded. "Not near the heart."

She placed the gun in the same spot near his left ear, and this time Naruto didn't even flinch. Konan slipped a scalpel into her free hand, curious, and nicked Naruto's neck. He blinked, confused, but didn't react to the injury as it healed itself over. "Did you just do something?"

"No," Konan lied, the scalpel slipping its way back up her sleeve.

Naruto glanced at her, then at the needle gun. "Are you sure?"

"Perhaps it was just the wind," she continued, moving to his ears. She had two small rods set to go in along the curve of the cartilage. Twin stabs, and they were in place in his right ear. "This should help your hearing."

"It wasn't the wind," Naruto said matter-of-factly. "Why do you need the Kyuubi?"

"To create a superweapon," Konan answered, piercing the other ear. "One that will bring about peace."

"So you would've come for me?" Naruto asked, hope slipping into his voice.

"At one point, yes," Konan answered. She held up another rod, thicker and longer than the ones in his jaw. She aimed the needle gun at his shoulder, along the joint, and pulled the trigger. "To create the superweapon, we need to find the tailed beasts and Seal them away." She paused. "The process, as I understand it, is fatal."

"Huh?"

"You would have died," Konan clarified. "And not a quick death. Removing a tailed beast from a Jinchuuriki is a slow process."

"Oh." Naruto fell quiet, and Konan added rods along his arms – two above the elbow, and two below. "And you're all immortal, like me?"

"In our own ways," Konan said. "None of us are vampires though. We, unlike you, can step into sunlight."

Naruto nodded, like he understood, and paused. "So you got the information out of that place?"

"The Archives?" Konan hummed. "No. All that we know about vampires comes only from the stories that currently exist. None of the history or answers that you desire."

"Why not?" Naruto protested, sitting up when Konan put aside the needle gun. The air in the room shifted, becoming sharper.

"Because the Archives are annexed to the Land of Earth," Konan answered. "It will take time for our members to gather and infiltrate it. In the meantime," she handed him a sakkat and a small cloak, black with red trim and dotted with red clouds, "go explore all that our village has to offer. Those piercings will prevent you from harming anyone that Pein does not want harmed."

Naruto nodded, putting on the shirt before taking the hat and cloak. He still didn't look all that happy at the wait. "I hate this."

"Be glad for the ability to leave this room," Konan said. In her hand, the signet ring grew hot. "And gladder still that we haven't decided to kill you."

"I'd like to see you try," Naruto said, grinning. Konan found herself grinning back at him. He would be a good fit, despite not having the chakra necessary for a signet ring.

Konan flicked the switch, turning off the machine replacing the body's blood with embalming fluid. She removed the tubes, placed the body in one of the lockers.

"Hey," Naruto said as they left the room, "do you have a guy with a swirly mask?"

"Tobi?" Konan paused just before the doors, frowning. "He is a charter member, just as you are. And too curious for his own good." She sighed, pushing the doors open. "Do not worry about him just yet. Instead, go see how it feels to walk among the living once again."

* * *

Itachi stood in the cave with Kisame at his side. The stone lantern lit up the room, casting long shadows of the two people in it. Figures shimmered in the light, casting no shadows of their own.

"It has been far too long since our last convergence," Pein began, his rippled gray eyes piercing even through the mirage. "However, this is necessary, as new information has come to light."

"You screwed something up, didn't you?" Kisame chuckled, although it held no humor. Every one of them knew the cost of failure, not even Leader was exempt from those consequences.

"One of Orochimaru's old experiments came loose within Konoha," Pein said, and everyone quieted. "An ancient evil, a method of immortality we believed to be a children's tale. The creature attacked the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki, and killed him."

Itachi stiffened. The Kyuubi was his target, and for its Jinchuuriki to have died... "What are my orders?"

Pein tilted his head, considering. "For now, you will aid the others in locating the remaining Jinchuuriki."

Across the room, Deidara's mirage doubled over, clutching their stomach. "That's hilarious! Oh, that's just beautiful, hmmm!"

"Moreover, we have located the Gobi Jinchuuriki," Pein continued over Deidara's laughter. "Deidara and Kisame will lead the assault in two weeks. Sasori and Kakuzu will join a charter member in infiltrating the Archives, where the Jinchuuriki is located."

Kakuzu snorted, while Sasori made no inclination of his thoughts on the matter. Itachi found himself being the one to ask the pertinent question. "What will Tobi be helping them look for?"

"Tobi is busy on a separate mission," Pein explained, and everyone stood straighter. They all knew that Tobi was the only charter member, to be inducted should any of them finally manage to die. It was unspoken that he was Itachi's replacement, and he was just waiting out Itachi's life to join. "The new charter member is Uzumaki Naruto."

Itachi's thoughts froze, colliding and reconstructing a thousand times each second. Eventually, he spoke through the silence. "The Kyuubi Jinchuuriki?"

"Not any longer," Pein replied. "He died at the hands of the escaped experiment of Orochimaru's, but it appears that the experiment was a vampire. Tobi is currently seeking out that avenue of information, while Naruto joins Kakuzu and Sasori in seeking information from the Archives."

"Vampires?" Deidara snorted. "That's a laugh."

"Says the man with no heart," Sasori grumbled, and Deidara fumed. Their images faded, and with them went everyone else, leaving Itachi alone in the dark with Kisame.

"So the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki is dead," Kisame mused. "Seems you're out of a job, Itachi."

Itachi turned, leaving the light of the cave. Behind him, the flame in the lantern died.

* * *

 Kakashi sighed, staring at his team. After Naruto hadn't shown up, he had sent his dogs out searching for him, preparing himself for a lecture he hadn't had to use in well over a decade. What he'd found was a pile of ashes that the medical corps had said used to be human, clothes belonging to an academy teacher, and what looked like an attempted defection. Nothing about the situation made any kind of sense, but after so long without even a trail to follow, the Hokage had been forced to list Naruto as MIA. Unlucky for Kakashi, that meant that Naruto was officially a genin, and officially his student, so the other two were also his students.

"Hello, minions!" Kakashi greeted the preteens, enjoying the irked looks on their faces. "It seems that we finally have a new member of our team joining us later today. A genin that graduated some time back, and recently found himself without a team."

Sasuke and Sakura looked interested at that, and Kakashi stepped aside with a grand sweep of the arm. The new kid, an older teenager who looked frail even in the best light, gave his new teammates a slight smile and wave. "Hello. I am Shin."

Kakashi had been warned by the Hokage to keep an eye on the kid, apparently being one of Danzo's. He held back a sigh, and resigned himself to the fact that this team was going to be, gods help him, _interesting_.

* * *

 The rods burned warm beneath Naruto's skin, and he figured that meant they were working. He managed to walk out of the building and onto a street with several dozen people moving along it, and despite the dull itch and ache of his throat and stomach, Naruto hadn't gone after anyone. He stumbled along, and knocked into some of them, but mumbled apologies were more than enough.

The people here, once they saw his cloak, gave him a wide berth, but it was different here. Instead of harsh looks and dead glares, Naruto got awed stares. It all was foreign to him, every part of it. One child, a small girl, even came up and handed him an origami flower, asking him for a blessing and that it was a gift for Lady Angel. Naruto had nodded, graciously accepted the flower, and promised to pass it along. The girl had taken one look at him, at the piercings and his face, and returned to her mom starry-eyed. It made him feel strange. All of it felt strange, foreign and odd in a way that made his chest feel big.

Naruto didn't stay out very long, and returned to the tower after the encounter. He cradled the paper flower in his hands, careful not to squeeze or crumple it. It had all felt so very odd. Was this what it felt like, to be human? To be treated like a human?

Konan entered the morgue, amusement on the edges of her lips. "You don't have to stay down here."

Naruto held up the flower. "A girl gave me this. Wanted me to give it to you."

Konan took the paper flower, smiling fondly at it. The paper flower in her hair came undone, and Konan replaced it with the gifted flower. "Her father died on a mission. She believes I can commune with his spirit, inform him that she hopes he's proud of her."

"You got all that from origami?" Naruto asked, feeling something odd in his chest.

"The folds tell a story," Konan said. "I am not called the Paper Angel for just my appearance, Naruto." she beckoned him to follow her, and the two walked up the tower, away from the morgue. "I trust your piercings work, then, if you've brought back this?"

"Yeah," Naruto said. "What's it like having parents?"

Konan glanced at him, sad understanding in her eyes. "The Land of Rain is a war-torn land," she said. "Often this means orphans are created within our borders. All of us understand the pain of loss. You are not alone here, Naruto."

Her words sat heavy in him, and stuck there long after she left him in the spacious apartment that she'd said he could call his own.

* * *

 Konoha was as easy to slip into now as it was four years ago, and another eight before that. Tobi considered it a badge of honor that he could walk through the barrier, could walk right into the heart of Konoha with no one the wiser.

The first place he stopped was the Uchiha compound. Four years without anyone to maintain the upkeep, and it was showing. Cracks in the walls, and the faint smell of wood rot hung in the air. Chipped tiles and broken windows were still there, and Tobi recalled that night. He had stuck to Kunai and Shuriken, for simplicity's sake, and took special care not to leave any trace evidence, chakra or otherwise, for trackers to catch hold of. It was all pointless, of course, with so much Uchiha chakra heavy in the air it would be impossible to sort one person's away from another, but he never wanted to give the enemy the satisfaction of ever knowing that someone like him existed.

Tobi slipped through the walls of the Nakano shrine, past layers of dust and cobwebs, and down into the secret room. He knew that it was built in the early days of the village, when everyone was still getting used to the idea of living so close to the other clans. He knew that the original purpose was to hide the innermost secrets of their clan, just as all the other clans had the same somewhere within their own lands.

The script on the slab looked the same as it always did, and Tobi envied Pein for his Rinnegan. What secrets of their clan must be so sacred, so important, that even the Uchiha could not see them? What secrets could those eyes reveal?

Tobi stepped away from the monument. He couldn't move it, not until Itachi was dead and he could approach young Sasuke to his cause. Tobi knew that Itachi had shared the location with his brother, and knew that Itachi was leaking information to Konoha. He knew everything about Itachi, even the things the young teen didn't know about himself. Itachi's illness, for one. The power held within his eyes, for another. He suspected that Itachi planned to use his Susanoo to Seal away one of the players in this game, and wondered who it would be that Itachi's sword fell upon. Orochimaru, perhaps, given the man's obsession with the Sharingan and the prospect of an Uchiha body. Maybe he could reach out to Konoha, offer Akatsuki's services in removing the man from the board. After all, Orochimaru was planning something with Suna, potentially involving their Jinchuuriki, so it was only to their advantage to keep a close eye on things.

Tobi moved through the earth, finding himself within the deep underground, the old and forgotten tunnels that Orochimaru used to conduct his experiments. The vampire that attacked Uzumaki Naruto had to have been dying, since there were no other attacks or missing persons beyond the boy, the teacher, and the ANBU. It took little effort to locate the sewage line where Uzumaki's death occurred. All he found was the trampled footprints of the team that had naively attempted to track the boy. Hidden within them, at the bottom of the ladder, were ashes. Tobi knelt, pressing a finger into them, and rubbed the ash between his thumb and forefinger. He was familiar enough with humans ashes to recognize it when he saw it. The vampire had been weak, most likely. The Uzumaki's undeath was probably the result of a failed feeding.

Tobi glanced around the area, looking for any hidden passageway or forgotten tunnel the vampire must have come through. He walked through the wall across from the ladder, into the tunnel running parallel with the sewage line. Behind him, the wall was actually a secret door, opened only from within the tunnel. An escape route, not an entrance.

Inside the tunnel, it had been retrofitted into a science lab, tables brought in and lined the walls, filled with broken beakers and the twisted remains of a microscope. Tobi saw the burned remains of files scattered about, and took special care when sifting through the notes. Much of it was burned beyond recognition, while what remained was charred into brittle brown bits that crumbled to the touch. Had Orochimaru destroyed the notes, or the vampire?

To one end was a rusted cage, broken open, with half-melted shackles laying inside. Fire, it appeared, was this vampire's specialty. Tobi looked over the ruined notes, looking for something that survived the vampire's blaze. Wedged between the door and the floor, Tobi spotted a scrap of paper that managed to survive. He picked at it, carefully lifting the paper. It was as damaged as the rest, but for the shadow of a single word: Kumo.

Tobi hummed, tossing the paper aside. It seemed a trip to the north was in order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure If I can make the next chapter update on time, as I have officially caught up with everything that's written already. Expect slower updates, although I will do what I can to keep up with this story. 
> 
> The peek into Konoha isn't something I have a particular plan for, and this was mostly to show what's been happening on that side of things. It may be quite a while before anyone still loyal to it comes back into play.


End file.
